Edge of Destruction
by UntilNeverDawns
Summary: When an unexpected event throws a wrestler and an anthropologist together, just about anything is possible. Ambrose/OC
1. Chapter 1

**Special Thanks to the wonderful Teanni for reading through several drafts of this little piece before I finally told myself it was publish-worthy! Can't wait to see what you all think!**

The fire alarm blared, causing everyone in the hotel to awaken abruptly and stagger in the darkness, searching for wallets, phones, card keys and shoes before heading toward the nearest exit.

Kat Tyler was no different. She tossed off her blankets, grabbed her phone off the charger, along with her wallet, slipped into her nearest pair of shoes and headed out the door. She had just laid down and tried to go to sleep, but to no avail. She found herself in a crowd of people gathered into the parking lot. A lot of them were male, ridiculously muscled and shirtless. Under normal circumstances, she would have been staring and possibly salivating, but it was two o'clock in the morning and she was tired, so the salivating over the attractive males was going to have to wait. She shivered in the cool October air, her royal blue camisole and plaid pajama pants not really providing much warmth. Kat had a flashback to her college days, and late-night studying interrupted by someone forgetting to put water in their Easy-Mac. This was scarily familiar. Kat appreciated the slight bit of nostalgia, but was still not impressed. She had to give her presentation in a few hours and it would not be good if she was unable to give said presentation due to sleep deprivation.

A few feet away, Jon Good was pissed off and still slightly drunk from the earlier escapades of the evening. Fortunately, he had his friends and coworkers Joe and Colby to look after him. Of all the hotels they had to be staying in, theirs had to be the one with the two a.m. fire alarm.

"This is some bullshit," he complained, his eyes scanning the herd of people, fixating on a pretty girl with long, wavy, chocolate colored hair that went to the middle of her back. He could see a tattoo inked on her left shoulder blade, but was too far away to see what it was. She shivered, the cool air raising goosebumps on her skin. He unzipped his sweatshirt and walked over to her, placing it over her shoulders. "Here," he said.

Kat turned around abruptly when the fabric fell over her shoulders, she found herself looking into blue-grey eyes. "That's really not necessary," she said, trying to be grateful while still giving the man his sweatshirt back. He shook his head.

"Call it my good deed for the year, dollface."

"Thanks," she said, looking down at her cell phone. She opened up her Twitter and quickly typed in an update. _Two A.M. fire alarm #undergradnostalgia Though apparently chivalry lives. #impressed._ She snapped a quick picture to attach to the tweet, pulling a thoroughly unamused face. She locked her phone and pulled the mystery man's sweatshirt tighter around her shoulders, actually thankful for its warmth.

Before long, the hotel staff informed them that they could return to their rooms, apologizing for the inconvenience, blah blah blah. Kat shrugged off the sweatshirt and handed it back to the moderately attractive man who had given it to her.

"Thanks again," she said with a smile before disappearing into the massive throng of people. Jon stood there, sweatshirt in hand, wishing he had caught her name.

"Did you guys see that girl?" he asked his friends as they headed back into the hotel.

"The brunette?" Colby asked. "The one you gave your sweatshirt to- what the hell was up with that, by the way? You're never that chivalrous. That's usually my thing."

"Yeah, her. She was cold, I was being nice. Is that a crime?"

"Coming from you it is," Joe answered. "Nice is not usually your game, unless you see some reward at the end of it."

Jon shrugged. "Maybe I do, maybe I don't. We'll see."

When she got back to her room, Kat tried to go back to sleep, but her mind wouldn't let her. She kept thinking about the guy who had given her his sweatshirt. There wasn't anything that remarkable about him, he had a nice face and very nice eyes and from what she could tell he seemed pretty well built. There was just _something _that wouldn't let her rest. The realist in her brain thought to make it perfectly clear to her that the odds of seeing him ever again were relatively slim, but she couldn't help but wonder… what if she did? About a half hour later she was finally able to shut her eyes and get some sleep.

Kat woke up the next morning, after a surprisingly restful post-fire alarm sleep and jumped in the shower, intending to relax with her laptop and some Starbucks. She blow-dried her long hair and curled it slightly, added natural-looking makeup and got dressed. She grabbed her laptop bag, phone, wallet and room key and headed down the hall to the elevator so she could go to the hotel Starbucks. If she was going to make it through the presentation, she definitely needed caffeine. She ordered her drink and found herself a table in the quickly-filling coffee shop, opening her laptop and looking over her presentation notes.

Jon, Colby and Joe all met up outside their adjoining hotel rooms so they could head down to get coffee before hitting the gym. The three men were in surprisingly good moods, despite the early morning fire alarm.

Jon walked into the hotel Starbucks and noticed the girl from earlier that morning, sitting alone at one of the tables and typing away on her laptop. He noticed that purple was a good color on her. Her tunic was see-through, revealing a tank top underneath. He could see her shoulder tattoo more clearly now, it was a feather with the words "one day I'll fly away" across it. He told Colby what he wanted and the younger man went to go order their drinks. Jon was about to approach her when a teenager, probably about eighteen or nineteen quickly rushed up to the table.

"Excuse me Doctor Tyler," the young woman said, appearing quite flustered. "The board was wondering if you would consent to giving your presentation later this afternoon than originally scheduled. It seems the hotel is having space issues."

The woman, who only appeared to be about twenty-six or twenty-seven at the oldest, smiled graciously and nodded. "Of course."

"Thank you so much," the girl, who appeared to be an intern of some kind, said with obvious relief. "Someone will contact you with the time change." She then hurried off as quickly as she had appeared.

Jon just stood there, completely floored. So the woman was a doctor of some kind; that definitely made things more interesting. Colby came up behind him and handed him his drink.

"Aren't you gonna go talk to her?" he asked. Jon said nothing. "Seriously? Dude, you wouldn't shut up about her this morning."

Joe looked around, noticing that every other table in the coffee shop was taken, but there were three seats left open at Jon's mystery woman's table. The Samoan looked at his fools of friends and walked over.

"Excuse me," he said, causing the woman to look up from what she was typing. "Would you mind if my friends and I shared this table? Everywhere else is full."

"Of course not," she said, gesturing to the empty chairs. "Be my guests."

At her invitation, Colby took the seat on her right, Joe the seat on her left, and Jon the seat right across from her. She closed the laptop, sliding it into the black leather satchel that was near her feet and looked up, her eyes meeting with the same blue-gray eyes of the man that had given her his sweatshirt earlier that morning.

"Well this is unexpected," she said with a teasing smile. "I never did catch your name, sweatshirt man."

"Jonathan- Jon- Good," he said, giving her a smirk. "And that's Colby Lopez and Joe Anoa'i."

"Pleasure," she said. "I'm Katharine- Kat- Tyler." She didn't add the 'Ph.D,' mostly because she wasn't that used to having it yet, and titles made her uncomfortable. "So are you guys traveling for business or pleasure?"

"Business," Jon replied, as the apparent leader of the trio of men sitting in front of her. "What about you?"

"Same," she said. "But, as soon as this conference wraps up, I get to go home for a bit. Presenting over and over can get pretty exhausting."

"Presenting?"

Kat nodded, resisting the urge to wax eloquent on her presentation. Her enthusiasm tended to scare people. "I'm presenting at the conference that's being held here in the hotel. It's basically a rehashing of my dissertation."

"Dissertation?" It was Joe who spoke up this time.

"Yeah, it's really not that interesting, I promise." She fibbed, making a last-ditch effort to save face and not scare away the three men. "I'm just looking forward to going home for a bit and working on some of my side projects. Interesting tattoo, by the way. Samoan tribal?"

He nodded. "How could you tell?"

"I'm an anthropologist. I have a colleague who specializes in a lot of those kinds of things. We proofread each other's articles." She explained along with a charming smile. "What about you guys? What brings you out here?"

"We're professional wrestlers," Colby said. "Traveling is kind of what we do."

"That is brilliant," she said with a bright smile. "So I take it you guys are kind of a big deal."

"Kinda," Jon said with a smirk and a wink, which caused Kat's cheeks to blush a becoming shade of pink. "So, anthropologist, huh?"

Kat nodded. "Guilty as charged," she added an equally mischievous smirk in Jon's direction. "I focus mostly on languages. It's always something I've been good at." She bit her lip. For some reason, she found herself unwittingly _flirting _with this admittedly handsome stranger. It was refreshing, they were both strangers and there were no strings. _Flirt away, girlfriend, flirt away._

It had been eons since Kat had really flirted with anyone. Being a Ph.D at twenty-seven kind of limited her time for any meaningful relationships or a huge amount of socialization. Despite that fact, flirting appeared to be something akin to riding a bike.

"So I guess that means you speak a lot of languages then," Jon stated, only making eye contact with Kat, giving her the impression they were the only two people at the table.

"A few," she replied coyly.

"Which ones?"

"Well," she started. "I have a Bachelor's degree in German, and I speak passable Russian, Spanish, and French as well as a few really obscure languages that are really only for academic purposes."

"Damn."

She blushed and looked down at her manicured nails, somewhat embarrassed. She had this unfortunate habit of talking way more than she needed to. She reached for her drink and took a sip before turning the conversation back on the man in front of her.

"So you guys said you were kind of a big deal, anything I might have heard of?" her teeth found their way to her lip again, biting it unconsciously.

Jon shrugged. "Just the WWE."

Kat's eyes widened a little bit, her fingers pushing back some of her hair off her forehead. "Wow, I used to watch back when I was a little kid. Ages ago, though. That's still really amazing."

Her cell phone buzzed on the table, next to her elbow, alerting her that her presentation was due to start in less than 45 minutes.

"Well, that's my signal that I need to run. It was really great meeting you guys, and thanks again for the sweatshirt this morning Jon."

"Anytime," he replied, the three men standing as well. They were overdue for their workouts, but they weren't overly distressed about it.

Jon casually slipped a piece of paper into her satchel as they walked away. Now it was her move. He was interested to know what else the sassy anthropologist had up her sleeve, and if their flirty banter was any indication, she was interested as well.

"Dude, did I seriously just see you do that?" Colby asked as they walked away.

"What did he do?" Joe asked, having missed Jon's sleight of hand.

"He slipped her his room number. I knew you had some other ulterior motive!"

"I don't know, man," Joe said. "I'd bet you anything she doesn't show up."

"How much are we talking?" Colby asked.

"Will you guys stop?" Jon exclaimed. "Whether or not she shows up is between me and her."

The other two men looked at him and busted out laughing. Nothing was ever just between Jon and whichever woman he took to bed that night. He always had a tendency to brag. And being as the other two members of the Shield had just witnessed the interactions between the two people, it would be interesting indeed to see what would happen.

Kat walked back up to her room with a smile on her face. That hadn't been the most productive time she had ever spent at Starbucks, at least from a work perspective. From a personal perspective, the fun was just getting started.


	2. Chapter 2

**Okay, here is part two! Thanks again to Teanni for the wonderful beta-ing, and to everyone who reviewed! I hope y'all enjoy this next installment!**

Kat found Jon's little note when she pulled out her laptop to go over notes one final time before changing into her outfit for her presentation; it wasn't much, just his name and his room number. She smirked and chuckled. She was definitely considering it... after her presentation. She changed into lacy black underthings, including a garter belt to hold up her black thigh-high stockings, a black pencil skirt and a royal blue peplum top. She had always found that confident clothes. Even the ones that people couldn't see, helped her confidence considerably. She polished off the ensemble with a pair of sensible black Mary-Jane heels and fixed her hair one final time before heading to the ballroom where they were hosting her presentation. She waited in the wings for the emcee to finish the rather drawn-out introduction of her and all her credentials. _Do people actually listen to this stuff? _She thought wryly.

"Ladies and Gentlemen, it is my immense pleasure to introduce Doctor Katharine Tyler."

Kat stepped up to the podium and took a deep breath. "Thank you so much. As many of you know, I have spent the last several years studying-"

Jon sat in his hotel suite, casually watching TV. He knew it was risky, hell it was fucking crazy of him to give Kat his room number. If she was half as smart as he thought she was, Doctor Tyler would not knock on his door. But at the same time, he hoped she would.

Kat stood outside his door, her hand raised to knock. Her presentation had gone exceedingly well, but this was way outside her realm of academia. This was _insane_! Then again, Kat had always done the predictable thing, she graduated high school, went to college, got her graduate degree, got her doctorate and a teaching job, now she wanted to do something for herself. Desiree would be _so _proud. It was about time Kat did something she wanted to do without having to worry about how it would affect everyone else.

She took a deep breath, letting it out slowly. _It's now or never_, she thought, reaching up to knock on the door.

_Knock, knock, knock._ Jon jumped up from the couch and walked very quickly to his hotel room door, looking through the peephole. There she was. He swung the door open, letting her into the room. She walked in, still dressed for her presentation.

"I didn't think you'd show," Jon said with a smirk, baiting her.

"I mean, I can go," Kat said with more confidence than she actually possessed at that moment, moving teasingly back towards the door. She mentally hope Jon would stop her or else this was going to be horribly embarrassing.

"Oh no, you don't," Jon said pulling her close, his lips crashing onto hers as he pushed her up against the door, one hand tangling in her long brown hair, the other wrapping around her waist, caressing the skin at the small of her back. She kissed him back with ferocity, her arms wrapping around his neck.

They parted, giving Kat a chance to catch her breath as Jon started kissing down her neck. She couldn't help the mewling sounds that were coming out of her mouth as he kept his lips affixed to her neck. She reached behind her to the button that was holding her top closed, undoing it with more dexterity than she thought she possessed, before Jon reached down and pulled it over her head, tossing it aside. He kept up his assault on her skin as they staggered towards the bedroom, Jon losing his shirt in the process. His hands were on her hips, searching blindly for the zipper to her pencil skirt. She smirked against his lips and undid the zipper, shimmying out of the skirt as it pooled around her feet. He pulled her closer, their hips touching. She reached down and unbuckled his belt and unzipped his jeans. He stepped out of the pants and pushed her back onto the bed, gazing hungrily at her stocking clad legs and bare skin. He noticed that she had another tattoo on her left hip, one of those music notes turned into a heart things with some words underneath it in what he assumed was Latin.

He smirked from above her before claiming her lips again, his hand unclasping her bra and tossing it to the floor, his lips moving from hers to the pert nubs that were attracting his attention. He focused most of his attention on one while his hand teased the other, eliciting a moan from the woman underneath him. He was driving her mad with his ministrations.

"Jon, please," she moaned, causing him to smirk against the sensitive skin of her breast. "I need you."

He came back to her lips, taking them in a searing kiss as his hand went lower, teasing her center. She moaned into the kiss as his hands divested her of the black lace panties. She pulled off his boxer briefs, releasing him. He positioned himself in front of her entrance, hesitating for a moment just to torture her a bit further before thrusting into her. She gasped, adjusting to the feeling of him inside her as he started thrusting in and out, his lips attacking hers. She felt herself getting closer and closer to that point of ecstasy, her walls tightening around him. They found that moment of bliss together several more times before collapsing, Jon pulling her close to him, his fingers tracing patterns on her midsection before they both drifted off to sleep.

The next morning, Kat woke up to Jon's arm wrapped around her bare torso. She carefully extricated herself from his hold and went about gathering her clothes and putting them back on. She debated leaving a note, but decided against it. She gathered her things and quickly made her way back to her room, avoiding people as much as she could, which wasn't difficult being as it was approximately six am. She got back to her room, stripped off all of her clothes from the night before and got in the shower, turning the water as hot as she could stand it, trying to wash away the slight feeling of guilt that was uncurling in the pit of her stomach.

An hour later, she had checked out of her room and was on the road back home where she got to relax for a few weeks before beginning a teaching job at her alma mater. That, she supposed, was the benefit of a conference tour during the fall semester, it allowed her a decent break before she had to teach come spring. As she drove, she couldn't help but think about Jon and the explosive chemistry between them. She was starting to regret not leaving a note or _something_. Though at the same time, she really didn't want to be that girl who saw what they had for more than what it was which, for all she knew, was just a simple one-night stand.

That thought had her leaning her head against the headrest in frustration. She had never seen herself as a one-night stand kind of person; then again Desiree was always telling her that she needed to forgo emotional attachments when it came to relationships. According to her fraternity sister-turned-colleague, casual flings were a lot easier for people in their field who were constantly moving. Emotions led to putting down roots, and roots didn't always work well when work could take you halfway across the globe at the drop of a hat.

Back at the hotel, Jon reached over groggily to the other side of the bed and found it empty. His eyes snapped open, realizing that Kat was gone. His eyes scanned the room, looking to see if there was anything to suggest she was still there. Nothing. He cursed. Usually he was the one stealing away in the night, not the other way around. He got up and showered before heading down to reception to see if he could get Kat's room number, only to find out that she had checked out.

For some reason, he was disappointed that the anthropologist hadn't left anything. Not that he was anywhere near suggesting that their casual rendezvous had any long-term implications, but it wouldn't have hurt for her to at least have left him with something other than a massive amount of questions.

"Dude, you are being really quiet," Colby noted as they drove to the next city. "You okay?"

"Yup." he answered.

"So did she ever show up?"

"I don't think that's any of your business, Lopez," he said, the tone of his voice cautioning Colby to shut up. He didn't want to think about Kat. It had been nothing but casual sex, or at least that was what he was trying to convince himself.

"Calm down, bro," Joe said. "He didn't mean any harm by it."

Jon just shrugged and continued to stare out the window.

**Reviewers get cookies and my unending gratitude!**


	3. Chapter 3

**Here we are again! Thanks to everyone who has reviewed, followed or favorited, as well as a massive hug to the ever-wonderful Teanni! **

Kat pulled her car onto the long driveway and sighed. It was good to be home. The trees were all awash in color and she could see some of the horses out in the pasture behind the barn that split the property in half.

She paused briefly at the fork in the driveway, glancing over at the other house that resided on the twenty-some acres she shared with her undergrad roommate Janie and her family. It was a bit of an unorthodox arrangement, having two separate households on one piece of land in two separate houses, but it worked well for them. Janie, her husband Brent, and their two children BJ and Raelynn lived in the two story house that was at the end of the right fork in the driveway. Going straight at the fork would lead back to the stable where they had horses, as well as the wooded half of their acreage that was filled with trails. On the end of the left side of the fork was Kat's humble abode. It wasn't anything too fancy, just a single-story ranch where she lived with her cat, Moxie.

Kat pulled into her garage and stepped out of the car, popped the trunk to get her suitcase, and headed into her house.

"Aunt Kat! You're home!" Kat couldn't help but grin as Raelynn practically tackled her. It wasn't surprising that Janie and Rae were waiting in her living room.

"How was the speaking tour, anything exciting happen?" Janie asked from the couch, not really wanting to move due to her ever-increasing pregnant belly. She and Brent were expecting child number three.

Kat set her bag down and moved over to the couch. "It was pretty uneventful," she said, which wasn't technically a lie. The speaking part _was_ uneventful. "Did quite a bit of networking though."

"Oh that's good! By the way, Maria called while you were gone wanting to know if you were planning on going back home for Thanksgiving and Christmas."

Kat groaned. Her sister Maria was constantly harping about how she wasn't home enough, being as she lived and taught in a different state. If it was up to her sister, Kat would have never even left the state for her undergrad degrees, let alone gone all the way across the country to get her doctorate. Of course, being as she didn't start teaching until the spring semester in January, Kat really had no excuse not to make the drive back to Illinois for an extended family visit. She loved her family, they were just a lot to handle at once, even for someone who had lived with them her whole life. Maria had stayed at home, gone to a local college and then joined the police department. She was twenty-four and a great cop, but there was a bit of underlying resentment that had always been at play because Kat had gone away.

"Are you sure nothing happened while you were gone, Kat? You seem different," Janie observed, pulling Kat out of her family-related reverie and tossing her right back into the pool where her thoughts had been for the last day and a half. Jon Good.

"Yeah," she said quickly. "I'm totally fine."

"Katharine," Janie always could tell when Kat was lying, and she was lying like a rug.

"Okay, fine!" she said, mentally preparing herself for Janie's reaction. "I may have met a guy."

"WHAT?!" Janie exclaimed, not expecting that from Kat the hermit who "never got involved with anyone because she was too busy and didn't need the attachment".

"Shhhh!" she admonished. "Calm down, it wasn't anything major. There was a fire alarm, he lent me his sweatshirt. Then we happened to meet up again at Starbucks the next morning before my presentation."

"And?" Janie asked, paying rapt attention to her former roommate. "I know that can't be all of the story. C'mon!"

"Rae, Mommy and Aunt Kat have to have a talk, why don't you head home and have your daddy make you some lunch, okay?" Kat said, not really wanting to corrupt her adoptive niece.

The little girl nodded and rushed out the door.

"Okay, now you really have to spill," Janie said.

"Okay, okay, so we may have flirted a lot at Starbucks and he may or may not have given me his room number…"

"Oh my God, did you sleep with this guy?"

Kat bit her lip and nodded.

"Katharine Christine Tyler, you did not!"

"I did," she said sheepishly.

"And? Has he called you, what happened?"

"You see, that's the thing," Kat said, again bracing herself for Janie's reaction, this was going to be much worse than the first. "I might have left without leaving a note or my number or anything."

"Kat! Seriously?"

"I know, I know! I feel bad about just leaving, but I kind of panicked! You know me, Janie, I'm not a one-night stand kind of person!"

"You're not an anything kind of person. The last thing you had that could be considered a relationship was your fling with Dylan sophomore year of undergrad."

"Yes, thank you for reminding me, as if I hadn't repressed that memory enough," she said wryly.

Now that she had told Janie about the situation, the gravity of it was hitting her pretty hard. She had literally just left without a trace. For someone with so many pieces of paper in fancy frames that proclaimed her intelligence, Kat sure felt stupid.

After Janie had calmed down a bit, she left Kat alone to unpack and deal with her thoughts. She started a load of laundry and put her kettle on the stove, suddenly craving tea. No matter how guilty she felt for leaving, she was still deserving of tea.

"What am I doing, Mox?" she asked the cat who had hopped up onto the kitchen island and situated herself right next to the warm air output of Kat's laptop. "Eh, who am I kidding? People do that all the time, why is this any different?"

Halfway across the country, Jon hadn't spoken to his brothers about what had happened between him and Kat, leading them to make the assumption that the woman had either not shown or had left. Ever the curious one, Colby made it his mission to actually find out what had happened. The best way to do that would involve Jon and lots and lots of alcohol.

"So bro, what happened with you back there?" Colby asked an already intoxicated Jon.

"Back where?" he slurred, taking another drink of his beer.

"With Kat. Did she not show or what?"

Jon chuckled humorlessly. "Oh, she showed all right, but she left. No trace of her whatsoever. It was like she never existed, man."

Colby's eyes widened bit. No wonder Jon had been weird. He was usually the one who left in the night without a trace. Having the tables turned was obviously not a good experience for him.

"What would you do if you saw her again?" he asked, a plan slightly forming inside his brain.

"I dunno, man," he paused, looking off into space for a moment. "I mean, I'd…I dunno. I'm never gonna see her again anyway."

With Joe's help, he got Jon back to the hotel and later, in his own room, Colby dug out his laptop. For this plan to work, he had to find out where Katharine Tyler was. Thank God for Google. One of the first results was a press release. _Gratton University is pleased to announce the addition of Katharine C. Tyler, Ph.D. to the faculty of the Department of Anthropology. Dr. Tyler received her Doctorate in Anthropology from the University of California and has two Bachelor's Degrees from Gratton._

Colby mentally fist-bumped himself. Now he knew where Kat was, and they just happened to be having a house show on the campus in a little over a month. All he had to do was get her there and somehow get her in the same area as Jon, even if that meant barricading the door to the locker room until someone came out alive. Whatever it was, Colby knew he had to do something. Jon never, ever got this distracted by a woman, and there was no way he was going to let his brother pass up on something that could potentially help him out. Even if Jon would want to kill him for meddling.

**Remember, reviewers get my never-ending gratitude! **


	4. Chapter 4

**New chapter time! Once again, thanks to everyone who favorited, followed and reviewed! It means the world to me!**

"Doctor Tyler?"

Kat turned abruptly toward the door of her office, not expecting anyone to be stopping by. Her face broke out into a smile upon seeing Desiree, one of her fraternity sisters.

"Des? Is that you?"

"What's up, Doc?" the slightly older woman replied with her best Bugs Bunny impression. They embraced in the center of Kat's office before Kat directed her to one of the office chairs. Kat leaned against her temporarily clear desktop and smiled.

"I didn't realize you were back yet," she said with a huge grin. "I take it you had a good time?"

Desiree nodded. She was an archaeologist and had been away for the past several months working on her research.

"Most definitely. How did the conferences go? I've heard nothing but praise from the people I've talked to."

"They went well. Really well, actually."

Desiree smiled. "So did you meet anyone exciting?"

Kat pressed her lips together in a tight smile. "Perhaps, but that, my dear sister, is a conversation for another day. Shoot me a text and we'll talk about it over tea sometime. I have a meeting with Dr. Polinski to go over my syllabi for next semester."

Des nodded eagerly, giving Kat a hug before exiting the office. Kat slung her black leather satchel over her shoulder and grabbed the folder that contained the documents she would need for her meeting with the department chair. She walked purposefully up the two flights of stairs to the department office, her heels making a very powerful clicking sound on the tile floors. She smiled to herself before striding into the office.

"Hello Doctor Tyler," Jackie, the administrative assistant said with a friendly smile. Jackie had been there when Kat was still an undergrad, so to have her calling her 'Doctor Tyler' was definitely weird now.

"Hello Jackie, is Dr. Polinski in? She wanted me to stop by while I was in my office today to discuss my syllabi."

The older woman nodded. "Go right in, dear."

"Thank you."

Kat emerged several minutes later with a relieved smile on her face. Her syllabi had been approved, and Dr. Polinski had praised her on the feedback from the conferences. All in all, it was a good meeting. With the meeting successfully wrapped up, Kat headed out of the building and to her car.

Her phone rang from the seat beside her. She pressed a button on the steering wheel and ran the call through the car's sound system. "Hello?"

"Hey sis," the sound of her sister Marie's voice came through the speakers. "Did Janie tell you I called?"

"Yeah," Kat answered. "Sorry I haven't had time to get back to you. I've been swamped with unpacking and class prep for next semester."

"I'm sure," Marie answered. "So are you gonna be home for Thanksgiving and Christmas? It would mean a lot to mom and dad."

Kat tried not to sigh in exasperation. "I'm not sure about Thanksgiving yet," she said cautiously. "But I'm a definite yes for Christmas. I'll head home just as soon as the university lets out for winter break. Then mom and dad can have me until a few days before classes start. Okay?"

"Fine. I still don't understand why you couldn't have found a teaching job closer to home. Honestly, Kat, we never see you anymore!"

"Marie, I am not having this conversation with you again because every time I do, I end up being painted as the bad guy. It wasn't like there were a whole lot of universities chomping at the bit to hire me, and it's not like I would want to teach back home anyway!" She paused to catch her breath. "I'll let you know about Thanksgiving as soon as I figure out what the plans are, okay?"

"That's fine." She could still hear the irritation in her sister's voice. "Love you, sis."

"Love you, too," she said before ending the call. Leave it to her sister to put a damper on an otherwise halfway decent day.

She got home, plugged her laptop in and set it on the kitchen island before going upstairs and changing into a t-shirt, an old pair of jeans and her barn boots. She definitely needed a bit of stable time after the conversation with Marie. She headed out the back door of her house and across her back yard to the barn. She inhaled the smell of hay and horses with a contented sigh. If there was anything to take her mind off of a rough day, this would have to be it.

Kat grabbed a few brushes and went to go fetch Riot. The black horse stuck his head out of the stall door and whickered as she approached. She unlocked the stall door, letting herself in and sliding a halter over his head.

"Hey, baby boy," she said soothingly, rubbing his neck. "Who's up for a good brushing, huh?" She led him out of the stall and into the center aisle of the barn, where she clipped leads to either side of the halter and began brushing all of the dust and dirt out of his black coat.

When Riot was suitably brushed, she made sure he had plenty of food and water before putting him back in his stall and heading back up to the house, promising that the two of them would hit some of the trails in the woods that upcoming weekend.

Kat reentered her house feeling a lot less stressed than she was when she came home initially. She left her boots by the back door and booted up her laptop, letting it connect to her email while she found something to eat for dinner. The computer beeped, letting her know about several new emails. She looked at the screen, one email in particular catching her eye. She clicked on it, her eyes widening as she read the message.

_Kat, _it read.

_You probably don't remember me, but my name is Colby Lopez. We met at that Starbucks in the hotel that had the fire alarm at two in the morning. Look, I'm going to get right to the point, I'm not sure what went on between you and Jon, and frankly I don't want to know. All I know is now he is moody as fuck and sulkier than usual. I was a creeper and Googled you, congrats on the teaching job by the way, and noticed that we'll be doing a show at your campus right before Thanksgiving. I know it's probably asking a lot, but it would be cool if you came to the show. Call me if you can make it and I can set up everything logistically._

_Colby._

Under his name was a telephone number. Kat didn't really give herself any time to process the action before she was punching the number into her phone and hitting the call button.

"Hello?" Colby Lopez answered, unsure who was calling him from the unfamiliar number.

"Colby? It's Kat Tyler," a female voice answered from the other end. His eyes widened. He had not expected her to actually call. He gave Joe a look, signaling to the other man that Jon should probably not hear this conversation.

"That was a lot quicker than I was expecting," he answered honestly. "So are you in?"

On the other side of the phone, Kat paused. "What exactly are you thinking, Colby?"

"Well," the Architect of the Shield answered. "I'm honestly just trying to get Jon back to normal…or as normal as Jon ever gets. I'm thinking that if you come to the show, the two of you can talk out whatever it was that has him all upset and he can go back to being his normal lunatic fringy self. You come to the show, I'll handle the rest."

Kat pressed her lips together, trying not to over-think this too much. If she did that, then she would be almost guaranteed to lose her nerve. "Okay," she said at last. "I'm in."

"Fantastic!" Colby said, mentally fist bumping himself. "What I'll do is get you a ticket to the show, somewhere inconspicuous, then afterward security will bring you backstage and we will surprise Jon."

"Great," Kat said with only a slight amount of feigned enthusiasm. Why on Earth did she have a terrible feeling in the pit of her stomach that this was not going to end well?

After the call ended, Colby mentally congratulated himself on the great plan, while also hoping that Jon wouldn't be _too _angry at him for meddling. To be honest, he just wanted to see his brother happy, and if that meant tracking down pretty, brunette women with advanced degrees and convincing them to surprise occasionally volatile WWE superstars, then it would be totally worth it to the ninja man.


	5. Chapter 5

**Thank you to everyone who has reviewed, favorited and followed. Special thanks and hugs to Teanni for being an awesome beta and sounding board. I hope you all enjoy this chapter, and I can't wait to hear what everyone thinks!**

Kat stared down at her cell phone with no small amount of disbelief. Had she seriously just agreed to that? It had been a little less than a week since the conference, and though she was loath to admit it, Jon kept finding ways into her consciousness. Those thoughts usually blindsided her when she was alone in her office, organizing her desk with a system that would most likely not last a week into the spring semester.

The weeks before the show passed in little more than a blur, punctuated by time spent watching Janie and Brent's kids while the two parents-to-be were at doctor's appointments. When she wasn't in her office or watching her adoptive niece and nephew, she was doing chores in the barn or going on long trail rides with Riot. The day before the show had Kat in so much of a nervous frenzy that she called Desiree and invited her over for tea. If anyone knew how to calm down a nervous and slightly-freaking-out Kat, it was Des.

"Okay, so what's the issue exactly?" Des asked, sitting next to Kat at the kitchen island with a cup of steaming hot tea in front of her.

"You want the long version, or the Reader's Digest Condensed Version?" Kat replied with no small amount of sarcasm.

"The long version, obviously. I have a feeling the condensed version would be skipping over some major details. Honestly, Kat, I don't think I've ever seen you this worked up about anything. Ever."

"Okay, it all started at the conference. The fire alarm went off at like two in the morning, and me being a dumb-ass, forgot to grab a jacket. So this guy gives me his sweatshirt. He was pretty nice looking, as far as guys go. I didn't think much of it aside from 'wow, chivalry isn't dead'. Then I was at Starbucks later that morning, going over my PowerPoint and we ended up having coffee, kind of. He and his friends ended up sitting at my table because there were no seats left. We talked. I flirted. He flirted. I left. He slipped a note with his room number into my satchel as I was leaving." She paused to give Desiree a moment.

"And what did you do?" Des asked, curiosity shining in her eyes as she took a sip of her tea.

"Well, I did my presentation, mingled a bit at the reception afterward and then I went to his room."

"You did WHAT?!" Desiree's eyes nearly popped out of her skull. "No way, the Katharine Tyler I know is definitely not that spontaneous! Not that that is a bad thing. So I'm assuming you slept with this guy." When Kat nodded the affirmative, she continued. "Okay, so what's got you all freaked out?"

"I kind of left while he was sleeping and didn't leave a note or anything."

Des ran her hand down her face in exasperation. "Okay, we have acknowledged that that was a stupid decision, but I'm still not entirely certain why you're worried about it now."

Kat released the hold her teeth had on her bottom lip, where she had been biting it nonstop since the conversation started. "I'm seeing him tomorrow. He's in town with the WWE show that's here. One of his friends emailed me, and I agreed to go."

They sat there for what felt to Kat like an interminable silence. At this moment she was more tempted than ever to call Colby and cancel the whole thing, claim she was sick, fake a migraine, fake her own death…as drastic as that may seem, it was looking pretty damn appealing at that second.

"And?" Des asked.

"And what?" Kat replied.

"You're seeing him again, what are you gonna do about it? Hell, what are you going to do _when _you see him?"

"You see," Kat said. "That's what I'm worried about. I don't know what I'm going to do because I don't know how he's going to react. I haven't even figured out what I'm going to wear yet!"

Desiree saw the look of worried desperation in Kat's eyes and took pity. She got up and went over to the fridge, pulled out a bottle of wine and two wineglasses and set them in front of her. This was going to be job for something a bit stronger than tea.

The next night saw Kat standing in front of the full-length mirror in her bedroom, staring at her reflection with a "why-the-hell-did-I-let-Des-dress-me?" look on her face. She was wearing skinny jeans, tall, black leather, heeled boots and a black v-neck. Des had curled Kat's hair and had it cascading down her back.

"You do realize it's most likely going to be hotter than hell in the arena, right?" Kat asked, as Des sat her down to put the finishing touches on her makeup.

"Irrelevant," the other woman replied, misting Kat's face with some sort of setting spray so her makeup wouldn't come off.

"It's also rather cold outside," Kat noted.

"Which is why you are wearing that," Des said, gesturing to the grey leather jacket that was draped across the foot of Kat's bed.

"You've literally thought of everything, haven't you?" Kat asked, smiling in spite of the butterflies that were beating tattoos on the inside of her stomach.

"Yup. I'm also coming with you."

"You're doing what?" Kat asked, not believing what she was hearing.

"I looked at the ticket info and called, turns out there was an empty seat right next to yours. That way I can kick somebody's ass if I need to."

Kat smiled in spite of herself. "You think of everything, don't you Des?"

"Honey, I was your mentor. Think of what would have happened if I hadn't thought of everything."

"True that," Kat admitted, taking one last look at herself in the mirror. "Okay, it's now or never. Let's do this."

They got to the arena and found their seats. They could see the ring, but it wasn't like they were close enough to be sweated on by all the wrestlers.

Kat's stomach was in knots, she felt like she was going to be sick. Des put a reassuring hand on her shoulder. This was going to be a very long night.

"_Sierra. Hotel. India. Echo. Lima. Delta. Shield._" the music blasted through and Kat found her eyes drawn to the three men coming toward the ring. It was Jon, Joe and Colby.

"Which one is he?" Des asked.

"The one not in the tactical vest. The two-toned one is Colby, he's the one who asked me to come," she replied, trying to regulate her breathing. Seeing him again, after all these weeks was almost more than she could deal with.

"Are you okay?" Des asked, noticing the look on Kat's face. "C'mon. You need air."

Kat nodded, letting herself be led out of the crowd of people and out into the comparatively quiet hallway.

They stayed out there for a bit, just giving Kat a chance to calm down. They headed back inside and watched the rest of the show, staying in their seats until the security guard came to get them to take them backstage.

"Kat, you made it," Colby said, approaching them as soon as they got backstage.

She nodded. "I'm not sure I can do this, Colby," she admitted. "I really fucked up and I have a feeling he is not going to be happy to see me."

"Oh, no! You don't," Des said, forcing Kat to look into her eyes. "You are not backing out of this, Missy. Not a chance in hell."

"Who are you?" Colby asked, quite impressed with whoever this woman was.

"I'm Desiree. I'm one of Kat's sisters."

Colby nodded. "Okay. You ready?"

"Not at all," she answered. "But let's do this."

Colby pushed through the crowd of wrestlers and led them to the locker room of The Shield. He figured he would go in first. Joe was in on their little plan, and Colby had let Kat know that they wouldn't let anything happen to her, even if Jon got pissed at her.

"Everybody dressed?" Colby asked as he opened the door to the locker room. "You won't believe who I found!" He pulled Kat in, Joe out, and shut the door. Joe leaned against it, keeping either of the people inside from opening it.

Des looked at the crazy man with something that could only be grudging respect. "Was that your plan all along?" He nodded. "You're brilliant."

Inside the locker room, Kat pounded on the door. "Dammit Colby! Get me out of here!"

"Not until the two of you talk," he replied through the door.


	6. Chapter 6

Kat pounded on the door a few more times, each attempt getting slightly less enthusiastic until she stopped altogether, sinking down to the floor, and leaning back against the door. Damn Colby and his meddling! This was not how she dealt with conflict. She was so much better at ignoring a problem until it either went away or she had enough alcohol in her system that she didn't care. The problem was standing not even ten feet away from her and she was stone sober. This was not an ideal situation.

"What are you doing here?" he growled. Outwardly he acted pissed, hell he was pissed, but seeing her again right in front of him, in the flesh, caused him to pause for some reason.

"Colby called me," she said, her voice barely more than a whisper. "I'm starting to think coming here was a mistake."

"Oh really?" he came closer. "And was everything else a mistake too?"

She flinched away from him, which caused him to stop. She steadied herself, standing shakily and took a breath. "No," she simply replied. If she was going to have this conversation, it was not going to be with him towering over her any more than he already did.

"No?" He was surprised at that.

"What we had wasn't a mistake. I was the one who made the mistake. I fucked up," she admitted. "I should have left a note."

"You shouldn't have left at all," he retorted, the anger still in his voice.

"Do you think I don't know that?!" she replied; now she was starting to get angry. "Do you think I haven't thought this over a million times in my head, wondering how the _fuck _I hit this point?" She stepped closer to him, they were close now, maybe a step between them. "I've regretting leaving that morning ever since it happened," she was pretty close to yelling now. "I haven't been able to focus on _anything._ Except for you, you fucking _Neanderthal_!"

She had cracked. He grabbed her arms and pulled her to him, kissing her fiercely. She was grateful for the heels on her boots, making her taller than she actually was by about four inches. He freed her arms, allowing her to wrap them around his neck bringing the two of them even closer together. His hands roamed her hips, one hitching her leg up around his waist and cupping her ass.

"Neanderthal, huh?" he said against her lips. She moaned.

"I didn't mean that," she gasped as he kissed up her neck before claiming her lips again. She jumped slightly, wrapping both of her legs around his waist and kissing him back with vigor in an attempt to apologize for calling him a 'fucking Neanderthal'. He carried her over to one of the chairs, sitting so that she was straddling him. He pushed her jacket off her shoulders, his hands roaming under her shirt, teasing the sensitive skin of the small of her back.

Outside the locker room, Colby and Des looked at each other, wondering if the lack of sound coming from the locker room was a good sign or not. Desiree, ever the adventurous one, pounded on the door.

"Is everyone still alive in there?" she shouted.

Kat and Jon broke apart, Kat not moving from her spot on Jon's lap. She smirked at him.

"Yes," she called back, a cheeky smile coloring her tone. She leaned down, whispering in Jon's ear, "Since you're on my turf, what say you, stay with me tonight?"

At this point, she could have asked for the world and he would have agreed. "No running away this time?" he asked, smirking at her. She answered him with a kiss. After some necessary adjustments the pair left the locker room, seeing Colby, Joe and Des standing by the door.

"You both cool now?" Colby asked, looking between the two, waiting for someone to jump on him for locking them in the room together.

"Oh yeah," Kat said, stepping closer to him. "Bit of advice though, never do that to me again, okay?"

He nodded.

"So what now?" Desiree asked, noticing that Kat had returned to Jon's side almost unconsciously.

"Well, he and I are going back to my place. We can drop you off on the way out of town, if you want."

"Oh, don't worry about that," Colby said. "Joe and I can make sure she gets home okay, if there are no objections…"

"None from me," Desiree replied almost a little too quickly, her eyes appreciating the two incredibly built men standing in front of her.

"Okay then! Off we go!"

The group parted. Des, Colby and Joe headed to where the wrestlers had parked, while Jon and Kat headed to where her car was parked.

"Can I ask you something?" he said as they got into her car.

"Shoot," she said, turning the car on and pulling out of the parking space.

"Earlier, when we were arguing, you-"

"Yeah," she interrupted, knowing exactly what he was asking.

"Can I ask what happened?"

"I don't deal with conflict well," she said as an explanation. Jon nodded, not wanting to press her for information. "By the way, it's a bit of drive. It's usually better for faculty to live outside of town."

A bit of a drive, by Kat's reckoning, was about thirty minutes of wicked curves and lots and lots of trees. They finally turned into her long driveway.

"Nice place," he commented, stepping out of her car in front of the single-story when she did.

"Thanks," she said with a smile. "It's not much, but it's home." They walked up to the front door and Kat unlocked the door, heading inside.

"Aunt Kat!" a small child exclaimed as soon as she walked in the door, pushing her back against Jon who caught her with just as much surprise as she had.

"Rae, what are you doing here? Where's your mom?" she asked, really curious as to why Janie and Brent's daughter was running around her house.

"You're back!" Janie said, coming into the foyer from the living room. "Who's this?" she asked, giving Kat a look that was very familiar from their years as roommates.

"_Ich sage nichts_," she replied cheekily in German. "Now why are you in my house?"

"It _was _supposed to be girl's night, remember? Brent and Junior had boy's night tonight, so Rae and I came over. Allie was here for a bit too."

Kat facepalmed. "Damn, I'm really sorry, Jay. I thought I told you about the thing I had tonight. You should have called me!"

"No worries, girlie," the former roommate said. "Are we still on for movie night this weekend though?"

"Definitely," Kat answered, smiling. "Now go home, I know for a fact it is past little miss Rae's bedtime! And you should be resting, Mama!" Janie was set to have Baby #3 within the next month or so.

With a smirk and a wink, Janie and Rae left the house to walk back over to their own. Kat locked the door behind them and turned back to Jon, who still seemed a bit confused as to what had just transpired. Kat just smirked, attempting to hide the nervousness that was creeping in her stomach. Why the _hell _had she suggested he come here? She made her way through the foyer and into the kitchen, Jon trailing behind her.

"Drink?" she asked as she pulled a couple bottles out of the fridge and began pouring herself a drink that began with two shots worth of vodka. There was a man in her house, her inner sanctum, and she had invited him with the intention of sleeping with him _again! _She definitely needed a bit of liquid courage right at that moment. She added some cranberry juice and took a drink, relishing the feeling of the vodka burning its way down her throat.

"I make you nervous," Jon said matter-of-factly.

"Not you," she said, taking another drink of the concoction.

"Then what are you afraid of?" he asked, coming around the kitchen island to wrap his arms around her and pull her flush against his chest.

"I don't think anyone said anything about being afraid," she said, her sarcasm shield coming up to deflect him away from his current train of conversation. "Besides, you're talking too much," she said with a smirk, pulling his head down so his lips could meet hers.

Jon wasn't sure what exactly Kat was avoiding, but he let the thought leave for a bit, focusing on the woman in his arms. God, it felt good to kiss her again, despite the fact that the two hardly knew each other. That was definitely something Jon wanted to rectify.

Kat's drink forgotten, they made their way to her bedroom, clothes strewn about like Hansel and Gretel's bread crumbs between the kitchen and her room. When they got there, they fell onto her bed, their hands re-memorizing the feel of the other person's body. Kat was relieved to find that the connection they had shared before had not lessened in the slightest. Her nails scratched his back as he plunged into her, bringing her so close to the razor edge before they both fell over it and lay there in exhausted contentment.

Kat was rudely awakened by the sound of someone in her house. She looked groggily over to the clock on her bedside table. It was four a.m. She reached cautiously toward the drawer of her nightstand for the pistol she kept there.

"Kat?" The voice of Brent called, opening her bedroom door. "Ahh, my eyes!" he exclaimed, seeing his wife's best friend in bed with some man.

"Brent? What the fuck are you doing here?" Kat whisper-yelled, not wanting to wake Jon up. "It's four in the fucking morning." She quietly shut the drawer of her nightstand and tried to find something a bit more substantial than a sheet to cover up with.

"The baby is coming," he said.

Kat's face paled. "It's not time. It's early."

"No shit. Get your clothes on. Her mom and dad are watching the others, but she wants you there."

_Fuck. _She thought. There was no possible way to leave this gracefully. She nodded and Brent left. Kat scribbled a quick note to Jon, explaining the situation as best she could in the brief time she had. She also put her phone number at the end of the note, not making the same mistake she did before. She threw on the closest things that could be called clothes and rushed out the door.

Jon woke up to the sun streaming in the window of Kat's bedroom. He reached toward the other side of the bed and felt a piece of paper. His eyes snapped open.

"No, she fucking didn't," he cursed, seeing no sign of the anthropologist.

_Jon, _the note read.

_Sorry to not be here when you wake up. Janie went into labor early and asked that I be there. I swear I had every intention of being here when you woke up. I'm not sure when I'm going to be back, and I know you have places to be, so I sent Colby a text before I left. He'll come and get you so you can get where you need to go._

_I'm sorry,_

_Kat_

Below her name she had scribbled her telephone number.

**I know, I know, poor Jon can't catch a break! *hides just in case someone decides to throw something* I also apologize for the delay; work has been nuts and my lovely beta Teanni is currently off having fun in Poland. I hope you enjoyed the chapter, feel free to leave me a review with your thoughts! **


	7. Chapter 7

**Surprise! I've decided to post this chapter a bit early as an apology for the break between the last two chapters. Enjoy!**

Kat sat outside the delivery room, waiting anxiously for any news about Janie. Despite the fact that she had been jarred out of bed and personally requested there by the woman currently in labor, daddy-to-be-take-three was the one currently being yelled at by his wife. Kat got to sit outside the room, staring at the screen of her cell phone. It was about eight in the morning, and Kat figured Jon would have awoken by now. Against her better judgment, she dialed Colby's number.

"Hello?"

"Hey, it's Kat," she said.

"Yeah, I know," he said good-naturedly. "Caller ID is a wonderful thing. How's it going?"

Kat sighed. "Well, I wouldn't want to be Brent right now; Janie is definitely a bundle of joy when she's trying to push out another kid. I wanted to ask you about Jon."

"Really?" Colby looked over at the man who was sulking in the passenger seat. "What about it?"

"He's sitting right next you isn't he?"

"Yup."

"So I take it he's in a lovely mood this morning as well?"

"Yup."

"Can you do me a solid and make sure he understands that was completely not my fault this time? I feel really, really bad. It's not like I asked Janie to go into labor—"

"Kat, do you wanna meet your new goddaughter?" Brent asked, sticking his head out of the delivery room.

"Colby, I gotta go. My new god-baby just arrived. But you'll talk to him?"

"I'll do my best. Take care."

Kat looked over at Brent, getting up quickly and coming into the room.

"Meet Christine Katharine. Named after her god-mama," Janie said, looking down at the small, pink-wrapped bundle in her arms.

"Hi Chrissy," Kat cooed as Janie handed her over. Brent pulled out his phone and took a picture of both godmother and godchild, texting it to Kat's phone.

"So how did your thing last night work out?" Janie asked, still curious despite the exertion of just having a child.

Kat scoffed. "It was great, until your husband almost got himself shot, busting into my bedroom. I kind of had to leave, for obvious reasons. I left a note this time though, and my number. The ball is in his court now."

Driving across the country was a great time for conversation. People couldn't leave, or storm off, which was definitely something Colby was going to use to his advantage.

"So…did you two talk at all? About like anything?"

"What are you talking about?" Jon muttered, knowing full well what his brother was referring to, but refusing to acknowledge it.

"You and Kat, obviously there is something there or else you wouldn't be this upset."

"I'm not upset," Jon retorted. "I'm just pissed off that this is the second time I've slept with this woman and I wake up alone every time!"

"You realize that is exactly what you used to do? And you get that this time wasn't her fault, right? Her best friend went into fucking _labor_, that's not something you can exactly control, man!"

Jon rolled his eyes and just stared out the window. Colby sighed, if his best friend wanted to act like a petulant child and risk the chance at something good with an honestly great woman, that was his choice.

"Just…call her or something, man," he said after a few moments of terse silence. "She feels terrible about what happened. Trust me."

Jon didn't reply.

Janie and Baby Chrissy had to stay in the hospital for another couple of days, since the doctors wanted to observe and make sure that Chrissy was doing okay before "releasing her on the unsuspecting world" as Kat put it. If it was up to her, her godchild would be conquering the world by the time she was twenty-one. Brent drove Kat back home before returning to his wife and new child at the hospital.

Kat walked into her house and was conscious, for the first time, of how empty the solitude felt. She sighed and went about cleaning up the place, stripping her bed and putting on clean sheets, wiping down all of the kitchen surfaces and tossing the dirty sheets into the laundry along with her clothing from the night before. Unconsciously she found herself trying to return the house to how it felt before the events of the night before, as if that would help anything. Ever the realist, Kat had come to the realization that Jon would most likely not call her. No one liked waking up alone, especially since she was now 0 for 2 in that regard. She managed to get everything cleaned up before the exhaustion of her very early morning and the subsequent stress hit her. She curled up on the couch in her living room and wrapped herself in a fuzzy blanket, dialing her mom's phone number.

"Hey honey," her mom's warm voice came through the earpiece of the phone, making Kat smile. "How is everything?"

"It's good, mom," she said. "I'm calling to let you know that I can't make it home for Thanksgiving. Janie had her baby this morning, and they are going to need all the extra hands they can get."

"I thought Janie wasn't due for another month? Are her and the baby okay? Did she have a boy or a girl?" Her mom's enthusiasm about her 'adopted' daughter's children was always infectious.

"She wasn't," Kat replied. "She went into labor at about four this morning and Christine was born at 8:02 this morning. Mom and baby are doing fine, they're still in the hospital, but the doctors just want to make sure Chrissy is fine before they discharge them."

"That's so great, Kat," her mom said. "And your dad and I understand, but you are coming to stay for Christmas, right?"

Kat smiled through the phone. "Yes mom, I'm definitely coming for Christmas. I figured it would be best to just call you directly to tell you about Thanksgiving than have to deal with Maria's wrath."

"Yeah," her mom replied guiltily. "I know she can hard on you, honey. Don't let it get to you. She just misses you, we all do. But we understand that you had to go where the jobs were. You come home when you can. Make sure to send me pictures of the baby, okay?"

"Thanks, mommy," Kat said, trying not to cry on the phone with her mom. Sometimes she just needed some of that motherly encouragement. "I'll text you the picture I have when we get off the phone."

"Now you get some rest, I'm sure you're exhausted. I love you."

"I love you too, mom. I'll see you in a couple weeks." Kat hung up the phone and set it on the arm of the sofa after she sent her mom the picture of her and Chrissy, smiling as Moxie came and curled up near Kat's feet. Before she knew it, she was out like a light.

Jon stared up at the hotel ceiling, his mind racing. What _did_ he want from this thing he had going with Kat? She was beautiful, intelligent and if what he had seen from her house was any indication, rather laid back and simple. Colby's words from earlier kept rolling over and over in his mind. He needed to call her. He could still feel her sleeping peacefully in his arms, her long hair tickling his nose. He sighed and pushed his hair back. He was so stuck on this woman it was ridiculous. He rolled over onto his side, picking his phone up off of the nightstand and finding where he had saved Kat's number.

_Hey_ he typed, sending it off before he had a chance to rethink the decision.

Kat's phone buzzed right next to her head, awakening her from her extended nap on the couch. She looked at the time, seeing it was about 11 PM, and unlocked her phone seeing a text message from an unfamiliar number.

_Hi_, she replied.

_It's Jon, how are you? _The reply shot back much faster than she was expecting.

_I figured. Very few people have this number. I'm doing okay. How are you?_ She had definitely not expected to hear from him ever again. Of course, she had thought that back in October as well.

_I'm okay too._

_Look, about this morning, I really am sorry about leaving again. Janie was definitely not supposed to have Chrissy for another month. _Kat tried not to let her fingers get away from her. Even via text message she had a tendency to ramble.

_Apology accepted. I understand stuff happens. And it might sound crazy, but I would really like to see you again._

Kat read the message and smiled in spite of herself. _Are you asking me on a date, Mr. Good?"_

_Perhaps. That depends on you, Dr. Tyler._

_How so? _She shot back.

_Would you like it to be a date?_ Jon couldn't believe he was having this conversation. He didn't do dates. He didn't do attachment. Those were his rules, and Katharine Tyler was making him want to break every single one of them.

Kat sent back one word: _Yes._

**I know, I'm evil. Feel free to send me a review and let me know what you thought! Thanks to everyone who has already brought this story to 30 reviews! That's the most any one of my stories has ever gotten. (of course, my other stories didn't have Dean Ambrose). Until next time!**


	8. Chapter 8

**Behold, a new chapter! Many thanks to my lovely reviewers and my fantastic beta, Teanni. Lots of things are being set in motion in this chapter, so I hope you enjoy!**

Kat stared at her phone for a few seconds after sending the text. She squeezed her eyes shut and hoped for a second that she hadn't actually sent the message. She counted to ten and opened her eyes. That little three-letter word was still there, sitting happily in the green bubble on her phone screen. Dammit. Now she got to sit there and wait for a response, if there would be a response.

Jon looked at those three letters on his phone screen. She had actually said yes. He had not been expecting that at all.

_Okay. _He responded. _Where and when?_

_You're making me do all the work here, aren't you?_ _:) _Kat sent back, much more confident and flirty via text than she was feeling in person at that point.

_I don't know your schedule, just give me a day and I'll make it work. _

Kat paused. Thanksgiving was a couple days away, and she was basically homebound to help Janie with Chrissy, BJ and Raelynn. They would be having Janie's parents for a big Thanksgiving feast at the big house. She briefly entertained the thought of inviting Jon. She shrugged before deciding it wouldn't hurt to ask.

_Got any plans for Thursday? It's fine if you do, but if you don't…_

_No plans on my end, what did you have in mind? _Jon was silently praying that it didn't involve meeting parents or some shit like that. It was way too soon for that.

_Well, I was going to go back to Illinois, but the arrival of my adorable new godchild kind of derailed those plans. I'm doing Thanksgiving with Janie, Brent and their kids. We're making a ton of food. _

Jon mentally calculated. It was Sunday night; he had the RAW show the next day, followed by the Smackdown and Main Event tapings on Tuesday. He could be back to Kat on Wednesday.

_Sounds good. _

Kat looked at the two words that popped up on her screen. She had not been expecting him to agree.

_Great. I can't wait. :) I should probably get some sleep. I have office hours tomorrow. Sleep well :)_

_Goodnight, doll_. Kat smiled, reading his last text message. She got up off the couch and headed down the hall to her bedroom. She had four days before she would see Jon again.

Kat walked into her building with a giddy smile on her face. Her charcoal gray heels clicked on the tile floor as she made her way to her office. Her hair was pinned back in curls that rested about collarbone level, away from her face. She was dressed smartly in dark gray dress pants and a classic white button-up that was layered under a black sweater.

"Doctor Tyler, might I have a word?" Doctor Weston Anders, one of her colleagues who had been one of her professors when she was studying at Gratton, called from his office.

"Yes, Doctor Anders?" she replied, stepping into the room.

"I'm starting to get everything together for the summer expedition. I was wondering if you were wanting to accompany us?"

"Wow, I hadn't really thought about it."

"Katharine," Wes said, giving her a look that was incredibly familiar from her days sitting across a desk from him as an undergraduate. "We definitely need another chaperone, and you are the obvious choice."

"I will definitely consider it, Dr. Anders."

"Kat, how many times do I have to tell you, you aren't my student anymore. You can call me "Wes". We're colleagues."

"I know, I know," she said with a smile as she headed out the door and towards her office. "It's still weird."

Kat unlocked her office door and propped it open, taking a seat behind her desk and opening up her laptop to check emails from both students and colleagues. She looked up when there was a knock on her office doorframe.

"Doctor Tyler?" a girl with a brunette pixie cut asked, standing in the doorway.

"Yes? What can I do for you?" Kat asked, setting her laptop behind her and focusing her attention on the young woman standing in front of her.

"I'm Kallie Frey. I just added a double major about a week and a half ago. My paperwork says you're my advisor. I really just wanted to stop by and introduce myself." She looked down a bit sheepishly.

"Well, have a seat Kallie," Kat said, offering her one of the chairs. "Now you said double major, what's your other one?"

"German," the young woman replied.

"Really? I studied the same things when I was a student here. Who's you advisor for German?"

"Doctor Petersen," she replied. Kat smiled. Frank Petersen hadn't been her advisor, but she had spent at least a few days a week in his office just chatting during her undergraduate years.

"He's wonderful, isn't he?" The girl nodded. "Well, you are definitely in good hands. What are you thinking about doing as far as anthropology is concerned?"

"Most likely linguistic or cultural," she replied. Kat noticed that she was becoming more confident the further along the conversation went.

"Have you studied any other languages?"

Kallie shook her head. "I was hoping to take Russian as my other language credit, but we don't have the program. I'll most likely take Spanish."

"Good call," Kat said. "I'm not sure if you're looking at graduate schools yet, but most programs want proficiency in at least one language other than English. You have German, but it never hurts to have a back-up."

The conversation continued for a few more minutes before Kallie had to go and meet some friends for lunch. Kat smiled as she left, definitely seeing shades of herself in the young woman.

Kat left her office, locking the door behind her, and headed towards home. Janie and Chrissy should have returned from the hospital by now, and she was certain that she had some kids to coddle.

Kat got home and changed out of her work clothes and into a comfortable pair of jeans and a t-shirt. Despite the arrival of the new baby, the chores around the barn still needed to be done. She had gone out and fed the horses before she left for the day, but there were still stalls that needed to be mucked out and she was definitely in need of some Riot time.

After finishing the chores, she tacked Riot up and they headed off onto one of the trails on the back end of the property. She let him have a bit of free rein to get the excitement out of his system before she took control again, guiding him along at a leisurely walk for a little over an hour. Out here with nothing but her, Riot, and nature, was where Kat did a lot of her thinking. Everything seemed a lot simpler when it was broken down into its basic elements. Naturally, her thoughts turned to Jon. It was Monday night, which meant RAW. There were a few things she still remembered from her childhood watching of WWE; one of which being that RAW was on Monday nights. She really hadn't expected him to accept her invitation to come for Thanksgiving; she figured he had family somewhere or at least someone to celebrate with. That assumption seemed to highlight in her mind what was kind of concerning her. She barely knew anything about him. Granted, the internet could be a wonderful thing, but she really didn't want to find things out that way. Using the internet seemed wrong, if she was going to find things out about this guy, she was going to do it the old-fashioned way.

Having decided that, she lead Riot back toward the front of the property and the barn, where he was given a thorough brushing and plenty of treats before Kat headed back to her house to take a shower and prepare dinner. She got out of the shower and put on a pair of leggings and a slouchy gray sweater, fishtail braiding her long brown hair. She padded into the kitchen, opening up the fridge and trying to decide what to make for dinner. She pulled out a couple of things and got the food started. Her phone vibrated on the counter, alerting her to an incoming phone call from Maria.

"Hello?" she answered, putting the phone on speaker so that she could continue cooking as she talked to her sister.

"When were you going to tell me that you weren't coming for Thanksgiving?" her sister opened the conversation, already sounding angry. Kat took a deep breath before answering.

"Janie had her baby yesterday morning; I've been a little bit busy."

"So I had to hear it from mom? You couldn't tell me yourself?" Maria was in a mood and apparently Kat was the easiest target to take out her anger.

"Maria," Kat said calmly. If she started yelling, the situation would quickly disintegrate into a mutual shouting match that wouldn't get her anything but a migraine. "Janie went into the hospital at like three in the morning yesterday. I've had other things going on. Getting shouted at by you was not exactly on the top of my to-do list."

"Whatever," Maria said. The line went dead and Kat sighed.

Tuesday morning found Kat over at Janie and Brent's, sitting with Janie at the kitchen table and drinking tea. Janie had an entire pot of coffee to herself, and from the looks of it, she needed it.

"Chrissy keeping you up?" Kat asked cheekily, already knowing the answer.

"No shit, Sherlock," Janie replied. "You would think after two other kids I would be used to this."

Kat nodded. "You'd think. Isn't Brent helping you at all?"

Janie took another long drink of her coffee. "Of course he is, it's just a matter of corralling the other two long enough to actually get things done around here. It's complete chaos, especially with everyone coming over on Thursday."

"Right, about that…" Kat said, trailing off a bit.

"Kat, what aren't you telling me?" Janie asked, looking into her former roommate's eyes quizzically.

"I may have invited Jon to join us for Thanksgiving…"

"Wait, Jon as in the guy you were with on Saturday night?" Kat nodded. "That's great! I can't wait to properly meet this guy. What's he like?"

"He's great," Kat said, trying to keep it as simple as possible. "I'll let you decide what you think about him when you meet him. He's working tonight, but he'll be here at some point."

Kat was over at Janie and Brent's again, helping Janie with the food prep things for the next day as well as some of the housework when Raelynn ran into the kitchen in a small panic.

"Aunt Kat, Aunt Kat!" she exclaimed, running up to her and jumping up and down trying to get her attention by whatever means necessary. "There's a man at your house!"

"Really?" Kat looked down at her outfit quickly, taking in the grungy sweatpants and t-shirt she was wearing to help with housework. "Who is it?"

"It's the man from Chrissy night!" Rae exclaimed.

"Oh great," Kat said. Jon was apparently at her front door, and she looked an unholy wreck. "Is everything manageable here, Janie?"

The other woman nodded with a mischievous smile. "Go on, don't leave the poor man standing at the front door!"

Jon was standing at the front door, feeling foolish. After the Smackdown tapings he had headed straight to Kat's. Colby had ever-so-helpfully given him the address. He had rang the doorbell, and there had been no response. He was just about to call her, when he heard her voice from behind him.

"I wasn't expecting you here this early," she said, coming up behind him.

He turned around to take in her appearance and was surprised. This wasn't the polished college professor he had seen on their previous encounters. She was wearing sweatpants and a v-neck t-shirt, her hair was put up in a messy topknot, and somehow she was still just as beautiful as he had seen her before, if not more so.

"Yeah, well. I saw no point in going back to Vegas only to come all the way back here, so I thought I would surprise you."

"Well, consider me thoroughly surprised," she said with a grin, kissing him on the cheek. "C'mon in."

**Remember, reviewers get my ever-abounding love and gratitude, as well as fictional mind-cookies! I can't wait to hear what you thought!**


	9. Chapter 9

**The long-awaited Part Nine! Thanks to my wonderful beta Teanni and everyone who reviewed! **

Jon walked into Kat's house, looking around at the assorted décor.

"It's a lot different in the daytime, isn't it?" she joked with a grin, leading him through the foyer and into the living room. Unlike before, the spacious room was now lit by the sun streaming in from the large window overlooking the barn and trees on the back end of the property.

"Wow," he said.

"Yeah," she replied. "It's quite a view." All the leaves of the trees were colored in vibrant shades of red, orange and yellow, making the treetops look as though they were on fire. "There's only one other room in the house that has a better view than this."

"It gets _better_?" he asked incredulously. Kat nodded, leading him down a hallway and into another room.

She led Jon into her home office-slash-library and drew the curtains back from her window, revealing the view that showed off the entire property. Jon looked around the room a bit, his eyes stopping at some of the books on the shelves and a few of the things she had hanging on the walls.

"What is this place?"

"Well, it's my office. I basically use it to store all of the books and things that I either don't have room for in my office at Gratton or my parents didn't want in the house back in Illinois. It's a lot of history, basically." She looked around nostalgically. "I'm fairly certain eighty-five percent of my life could be found somewhere in this room, in one form or another."

Jon stood there for a moment, contemplating what she had just said. "So, you're telling me if I pointed to something in this room, there would be some part of your life connected to it."

"That's exactly what I'm saying," Kat replied. "In fact, pick something, _anything _in this room and I will give you the back-story. Consider it getting to know me," she finished the sentence with a cheeky grin that was just begging Jon to take her up on the challenge.

"Let's go basics first," he said, leaning on the edge of her desk, which by some miracle of God was not a disaster area like it normally was.

"On one condition," she rebutted. "You answer the same question you ask me. Deal?"

"Deal. Where'd you grow up?"

"Little town outside of Springfield, Illinois."

"Cincinnati, Ohio. Where's home?"

"It's a tie between here and Springfield," Kat answered honestly. "Mostly here."

"Vegas. When's your birthday?"

"January 17."

"December 7. Couldn't you just Google all of this?"

"Could have, but I chose not to. It felt wrong to take advantage of the fact that you have your own Wikipedia page. And I'm pretty sure that doesn't count as a question."

Jon was impressed. Kat was surprising him more and more. He glanced down at her desk top, his eyes being drawn to a framed photograph. "Your family?" he asked.

Kat nodded. "Yup. It's the four of us. Mom and Dad have been married about thirty-seven years now, I think." She picked up another picture, this one of her and a red-haired young woman in a police officer's dress uniform. "That's my sister Maria."

"You two get along?" he asked.

Kat made a sound that was somewhere between a chuckle and a sigh. "It depends on the day, honestly. We didn't used to. It got better when I left for my undergrad. For a little while, at least."

"Care to elaborate?"

Kat pressed her lips together, thinking for a moment. The issues she had with her sister weren't usually things she brought up this early in a friendship, regardless of how unorthodox this… whatever this was, was turning out to be.

"Remember Saturday night, when I said I didn't deal with conflict well?" Jon nodded. "Let's just say that despite the cookie-cutter appearance, everything wasn't exactly white-picket-fence Little House on the Prairie. Especially with me and my sister."

Jon straightened up a little bit and beckoned her over to where he was standing. "Hey, come here," he placed his hands on her shoulders and waited until her hazel eyes met his. "We all have some messed up things in our pasts, okay? We don't let it keep us down, right?" She nodded. "That's my girl."

She raised her eyebrows. "Your girl, huh?" she fought to keep a straight face as his mouth gaped open like a fish.

"Uhhh."

"Easy, tiger. Don't go having a coronary. I'm just giving you a hard time," she smirked, trying not to laugh at the look on his face.

He looked at her with a bit of disbelief. He hadn't been expecting that. She smiled as she bit her bottom lip, waiting for him to say something. He noticed a bit of uncertainty start to cloud her eyes. He frowned.

"What's bothering you, doll?" he asked.

She sighed, her shoulders slumping. How was she supposed to explain to him that she had no idea what the hell she was doing? She hadn't had a boyfriend since high school, and her last foray into personal intimacies had been her sophomore year of undergrad, which had been an unmitigated _disaster_. She had literally no idea how the dating scene worked now, especially in their situation.

"Kat?" he looked concerned. "Talk to me, sweets."

Now it was her turn to gape like a fish a little bit as she searched for the right words to explain her feelings about their situation. "Okay, fun fact: having a Ph.D at 27 doesn't really lend itself to having a lot of time to date, umm, dammit." She hated that she was stumbling over her words right now. Of all the times for her natural eloquence to fail her, it had to be right now! "Uh, what I'm basically trying to say is I have no fucking clue what the hell I'm doing. The last time I actually had a boyfriend was quite literally ten years ago. And now I'm gonna go hide somewhere." She turned to head out of her office and Jon grabbed her wrist.

"Hey, hey, calm down, okay?" he pulled her against his chest. "We don't have to complicate this any more than it already is. I like you, Kat. I like you a lot. But we don't need to go putting a label on anything right away. Does that work for you?"

Kat looked up at him. "Yeah, that works for me." She stood up on her tiptoes and pressed a gentle, chaste kiss to his lips. "So, you've seen my house. What do you want to do now?"

"What else is there to do?" he asked. He jumped as Moxie meowed from the doorway, not amused with being ignored.

Kat laughed. "Well, you can meet the other queen of the castle. That's Moxie, she's a bit of a diva, but she's nice. Or we can head to the stable and you can meet Riot, or we can watch movies."

"Wait," he said. "_Moxie?_ Is that even a word?" he was teasing, and they both knew it, but he couldn't help it.

"Yes it is. It's in the dictionary." She cleared her throat dramatically before reciting (in a horrible British accent) "Moxie: noun: force of character, determination or nerve. Thank you very much."

Her face broke out into a smile watching Jon try not to laugh at her.

"Dare I ask how Riot got his name?" Jon asked. "Did someone die?"

Kat giggled. "No, but when I got him he looked really intimidating, so we thought it fit really well. It just stuck. He's just a big softie now. What's so funny about Mox's name to you?"

"That," he said, pointing a finger right at her nose. "When I was wrestling in the indies, I was doing it as Jon Moxley, some people called me Mox. Some people from the old days still call me Mox."

Kat smiled and tried not to laugh. She seemed to be laughing a lot more today than she had any other time in recent memory. "I can see where that could be confusing."

They ended up relocating to Kat's living room and flipping though her relatively large DVD collection, trying to find something to watch.

"_Game of Thrones?_" Kat suggested, holding up the Season One boxed set.

"Never seen it," Jon replied. She blinked at him a few times in shock before sliding the case out of its sleeve and putting the first DVD in.

"You've seriously never seen _Game of Thrones_?"

"Nope," he replied, shaking his head. "Why?"

"Just watch, you'll see." Kat said, hitting the play button on the remote to begin the first episode. Jon wrapped his arm around her, bringing her in close as the show opened.

"And that right there is a terrible decision," Kat spoke to the TV. Watching as Cersei Lannister gave some serious royal bitchface.

Jon looked down at her. "It is?"

Kat reached over and hit the pause button, freezing the people on the screen. "Oh, absolutely. See the entire premise of this show is that you can't trust anyone. Which is going to become painfully evident as time goes on, you do not want to piss off the blonde chick and her brother."

"I see," Jon said, amused by her commentary.

"Sorry, I commentate on everything. Which I think is why people hate watching movies with me unless we've all seen everything already."

"It's fine," he said, kissing her. "Cute, even." She smiled against his lips and deepened the kiss, lifting herself up a bit so she could bring her leg over to the other side of his, straddling him. He bit her bottom lip gently, bringing it into his mouth and sucking on it a bit before releasing it to capture her mouth again. His hands were on her hips, under her shirt, his thumbs briefly feeling her hipbones before starting to travel up her sides, teasing her porcelain skin. Both of her arms were around his neck, her hands tangled in his dark blond hair, her hips moving unconsciously against his groin, causing both of them to moan.

He grabbed the material of her shirt, pulling it upwards. Her arms went up so that it could be removed before they came back again, this time helping him to remove his own shirt. Her arms came back around his neck, and he moved sideways, turning them horizontal, with her beneath him. He held himself up above her, both of them breathing heavily; he admired how her breasts pressed against the teal colored fabric of her bra. She bit her lip, waiting to see what he was going to do next. He bent down, pressing his lips to her neck, then to her collarbone, the space between her breasts, making a line down to her navel.

"Jon?" she breathed, as his thumbs hooked both sides of her sweatpants.

"Yeah, doll," he replied. "Is something wrong?" He looked up at her, his chin resting right underneath her navel.

"It's just…" she paused, trying to collect her thoughts from her somewhat dazed brain. "It's been a while since anyone's done…_that_." Good God, she felt like she was a teenager, not even able to say what was about to take place.

"We don't have to do anything you're not comfortable with, doll. I swear to you. We will go as fast or as slow as you want." He sat up, offering her a hand up as well and pulling her into an embrace.

"I'm sorry," she said.

Jon looked at her in shock. "What the hell are you apologizing for?" he waited until he could see her eyes. "You have absolutely nothing to apologize for, okay?" He pulled her to him, relishing the skin on skin contact they were able to get, but not wanting to push her any further. There were some serious depths to this woman, and he was just barely sticking his toe in the water.

He found his shirt next to the couch and pulled it on, handing Kat hers before settling back on the couch again.

"So who all is going to be at this thing tomorrow?" he asked, wanting to fill the silence that was threatening to descend.

"Well, there's you and me. Janie, who you met briefly Saturday night, her husband Brent, their kids, Brent Junior, Raelynn and Christine, and Janie's parents Nessa and Todd. Everyone's really cool. Raelynn and Junior are twins; you met Rae on Saturday night. They're both four. Chrissy was born Sunday morning, so she's still really little. But everyone is really laid back. Nothing to worry about." She cuddled in a little closer to him as if to prove her point just a tiny bit more.

"If you say so," he replied, kissing the top of her head.

**Thank you to everyone who has favorited, followed, reviewed and read this story! You guys are literally awesome and I can't wait to hear your thoughts on this installment! **


	10. Chapter 10

**A huge thank you to my wonderful beta Teanni, as well as everyone who has favorited, followed and reviewed! Y'all really make my day! I apologize for the delay in the chapter, I was busy moving back to school. Feel free to shoot me a review and let me know what you think! **

Kat's eyes snapped open and she looked around, trying to figure out what had awoken her from her slumber. Jon. He wasn't in the bed next to her. She turned her head toward the master bathroom, and seeing no light, kicked off the covers and went to go find him.

She rubbed her eyes sleepily as she padded softly down the hallway, looking in doorways and finally finding him standing in her office, looking at more of the framed mementoes on her walls.

"Jon?" she asked, rubbing the back of her neck as she leaned against the doorway. "What are you doing up?"

He turned at the sound of her tired voice, a bit startled. "Couldn't sleep," he said. She smiled wryly as she came into the room and leaned against his shoulder.

"You couldn't sleep so you decided to try and figure out a bit more of my life story. Find anything interesting?"

"Yeah, actually," he said, pointing to a series of frames that all held posters, pictures, ticket stubs and programs from various stage shows - mostly musicals. "You did theatre?"

She nodded. "Yeah. All through high school up until right before my junior year of undergrad," she pointed out each show in the frames.

"Why'd you stop?" he asked.

Kat sighed. "Lots of reasons." She picked one of the framed pictures up off of her desk. It was a picture of her and a much younger girl. The frame around the picture read "Kasey and Rhia - Stage Sisters Forever" in swirly lettering. "I let the other girls get to me, I guess. Before, I used to do it because it made me happy. After, it just didn't make me happy anymore. I spent so much time comparing myself to everyone else onstage that I forgot why I was out there in the first place."

"Who's Kasey?" he asked, reading the frame on the picture. "I mean, she looks like you…"

"Kasey was my nickname all through high school. I did shows with the same group of people, so it stuck around for most of the shows. Katharine Christine, K. C. Kasey."

"And this?" He held up a frame of four women in jumpsuits, hard hats and hiking boots that said 'First Annual Nerd Herd Vacation, Blanchard Springs.'

"Well, there's me and Janie. Allie is the one between us, and Karah is the one on the end. We've all been friends for years. We get together every year and go on vacation together." She gestured to the other frames that lined the walls. "This year will be number seven," she said with a grin. "We aren't entirely sure what we're going to do yet. Janie's mom is the one who started calling us the Nerd Herd. It just kind of stuck." Kat tried her best to stifle a yawn and failed miserably.

"C'mon," Jon said, leading her back to the bedroom. "You still need sleep."

"Damn straight," she replied, not even wanting to argue that point, being as it was some ridiculous hour of the morning and they had to be at Janie's for Thanksgiving by two. They climbed back into bed and Kat cuddled close to Jon before wrapping herself in a burrito of blankets and going straight back to sleep.

Jon still couldn't sleep; everything he had learned in the past few hours about the woman in his arms was reeling around in his head. Instead of making him want to run like it normally did, knowing her better made him want to stay. That's what had been keeping him awake in the first place. Seeing her lying there, sleeping peacefully in his arms, her face untroubled by the cares of her day-to-day existence, made him want to be a part of that existence. With that incredibly uncharacteristic thought, he pressed a kiss to the top of her head and closed his eyes, hoping he had the energy to withstand whatever tomorrow was going to bring.

The next morning found Kat waking up with both of Jon's arms wrapped around her waist in what felt like a vise grip. She tried, to no avail, to get him to move.

"Jon, I need you to let me up," she said, trying to be patient, having no idea what he was like in the morning, being as this was the first time they had actually woken up together. She tried to squirm out of his grasp. "Jon, seriously. I have to get ready." She just sighed and closed her eyes again, though it was a bit frustrating that she was stuck she couldn't help but find it cute. He'd have to move eventually…right?

Wrong. Forty-five minutes later, Kat was still trying to get out of Jon's death grip, except now on top of the ever-increasing time crunch, her bladder was now protesting. "Jon, c'mon… I really, _really _need to get up now. And I can't do that with you cutting off circulation to the lower half of my body." At this point, she was a teeny-tiny bit more than frustrated. The man could sleep like the dead!

"Good morning to you too, sunshine," he grumbled, releasing her.

"Thank you," she said, pressing a quick kiss to his lips and rushing to the bathroom to take care of her immediate needs and start freshening up for the day. "You hungry?" she asked from the bathroom after she had gotten most of her morning routine taken care of.

"Nope," he said, watching her run a curling iron through her long brown hair from the bed.

"Okay. Also, I should probably warn you, Janie's mom is a bit… brash. She has no filter. So just, don't be too surprised with the things that come out of her mouth, okay? And if you could conveniently forget anything embarrassing she happens to say about me, that would be awesome too," she added, setting the curling iron down and moving on to doing her makeup. She kept the makeup simple, just some pale brown eye shadow and a little bit of lipstick.

She walked out of the bathroom and over to her closet door where the dress she was planning on wearing was hanging. Completely disregarding the man still sitting in her bed, Kat stripped off her pajamas and slipped the burgundy dress over her head, buckling the brown belt around her waist. She gave herself a once-over in the full-length mirror before turning to Jon.

"Well?" she asked, turning so he could see the entire package.

"Damn," he said with a smile, taking in the beautiful woman standing before him. The dress complemented her pale skin and chocolate hair perfectly. She looked fantastic. He stood up and walked over to her, spinning her around so that they could look at their reflections in the mirror. "You're gonna make me look under dressed, doll," he said, kissing the side of her neck.

"Well, you work on getting ready. I have to finish up the food I promised Janie I would bring. If you need anything, I'll be in the kitchen, okay?"

He nodded, and Kat headed down the hall to put the finishing touches on the desserts she had started the day before. The Jell-o had set wonderfully and Kat was just adding the whipped cream topping to the chocolate pie when Jon came into the kitchen in a nice pair of jeans and a button-down. Kat subconsciously licked her lips. Hot damn this man was driving her insane! She glanced at the clock on the oven timer that read one forty-five and looked at him.

"You ready for this?" she asked, giving him one last chance to bow out gracefully, though she would admittedly be disappointed if he did.

"Oh yeah," he said confidently, although he was not actually feeling as confident as he was acting.

Kat placed the now finished pie into a pie carrier and put the Jell-o into another container before grabbing both and heading toward the front door. "Let's go then. The chaos and craziness awaits!"

"Aunt Kat!" the twins exclaimed as soon as Kat and Jon walked in the door, almost knocking the woman over with the ferocity of their hugs. The pie was almost lost in the hubbub.

"Oh good, Kat's here," Brent said, coming into the foyer. "Let me take those desserts while you wrangle the kids. I think Janie's in the family room. Her mom and dad are having grandparent time with Christine."

"Lovely. Oh, Brent, this is Jon," she said, introducing the two men. "Jon, this is Janie's husband Brent."

"Nice to meet you, man," Brent said. "Happy Thanksgiving."

"Happy thanksgiving," Jon replied.

"Is that Kitty I hear in there?" a southern-accented voice called from the family room.

"Kitty?" Jon playfully whispered in Kat's ear.

"Shut up," she replied. "Janie's mom is the _only _person who can get away with calling me that. _Ever_. Yes, Mama Morton, it's me!"

"Well get your cute little ass in here and say hello missy! I haven't seen you in forever!" Kat and Jon went into the family room where Janie and baby Chrissy were being doted upon by Janie's parents. "Oh good Heavens, Kitty brought a man with her? Is the world endin'? Has hell frozen over? Wait, Janie, is this the one you were telling me about?"

Jon watched as Kat's face went from its usual porcelain shade to bright red with embarrassment. She took a few deep breaths before answering.

"Yes Mama Morton, I did bring a man with me. This is Jon. As far as I know, the world has not ended, nor has Hell frozen over." Her face broke into a huge smile. "Damn it's good to be home. I'd almost forgotten what a holiday was like without you teasing the living daylights out of me! "

"Oh, honey, we've barely even started," Janie's mother said with a wink.

**Teeheehee. Reviews make me smile, and make me want to write faster! Which then means faster updates :) (I'm not trying to bribe you, what on Earth are you talking about?) **


	11. Chapter 11

**And here we are with another exciting installment, the long-awaited Thanksgiving Dinner! Thank you to everyone who has reviewed, I love you all! Enjoy!**

Kat was about _this _close to having steam coming out her ears from how red her face had turned. True to form, Janie's mother had brought out every single embarrassing snippet from her and Janie's days as undergrads, including some with video evidence.

"_Oh my God, if this is what I think it is, I'm gonna fucking kill you!" _the voice of a slightly younger Kat exclaimed from Janie's smartphone. Of all the stories, why the hell did it have to be that one?

"And we're done." Kat said, snatching the phone away and closing out the video before any other damage could be done. "Have we had enough of the horrifically embarrassing Kat stories? Cause I'm kind of hungry." She was not about to let that video play long enough for Jon to see what had been in that Christmas present.

There were murmurs of assent and everyone went into the kitchen, where the food had been spread out very nicely by Brent. Everyone filled their plates and helped the twins fill theirs before taking seats in the dining room.

"So Kitty, Janie never did tell us how you and Jon actually met."

"Well, it's kind of a funny story actually," Kat said, pausing to take a sip of her white wine. "We were staying at the same hotel when I was gone for my conference circuit. The fire alarm was set off around two in the morning and he lent me his sweatshirt."

"It was my favorite one too. Honestly thought I'd never see her or my sweatshirt again at that point," he interjected. "But there she was the next morning, sitting in Starbucks. So I asked if I could join her."

"Technically Joe asked if you could join me. You were too busy arguing with Colby," she said with a cheeky grin. "And the rest is history," she said, conveniently cutting out their later rendezvous and whatnot in the presence of the children.

"So now what is it you do, Jon?" Janie's dad Todd asked, finally able to get a word in edgewise. "I don't think Kat or Janie has ever told us."

"I'm in sports entertainment," he said.

"Hmm." Todd said. "That sounds interesting. Lot of traveling, I suppose?"

"Yes, I spend about four days a week on the road, sometimes more. Somehow that hasn't sent Kat running _quite _yet," he said, grasping her hand under the table and squeezing it, silently begging her to back him up.

"He makes it sound so difficult," she said with a grin, lean over to kiss his cheek. "It's not like I don't do my fair share of traveling either."

"But Kitty, when you leave, you go for like three months straight, sometimes more. How long was it you were down in South America?"

"Eighteen months," she said somewhat sheepishly, looking at Jon from the corner of her eye, waiting to see his reaction to Nessa Morton's delightful revelation of just how long her expeditions tended to last. Surprisingly, he didn't seem all that shocked by it.

"Mom, Kat won't just be heading off for months at a time now. She has to teach come spring, and that's going to leave her plenty busy," Janie said, jumping in to save a potentially volatile situation. "Besides, with Chrissy just being born, I'm going to need plenty of help with the twins, right Aunt Kat?"

Kat nodded, already having resigned herself to babysitting duty until Janie was able to balance keeping the twins busy and taking care of the new baby. What else was she supposed to do until the new semester started anyway?

Dinner continued on with the usual smatterings of inane conversation. Kat made sure to look over at Jon every so often with a small smile just shared between the two of them. It was her way of both thanking him for coming as well as encouraging him.

After dinner the adults retired to the family room to sit and chat for a bit before dessert while the twins played on the floor. Kat and Jon were sat together on the loveseat and baby Christine was handed into the arms of her godmother. Kat looked down tenderly at the sleeping child and smiled.

Jon looked at Kat with wide eyes, which went unnoticed by the woman holding the infant; the way she looked with that baby hit him like a kick to the stomach. One day, that could be her holding _their _baby, _his _baby. _Whoa, whoa, whoa, _he chided, mentally slapping some sense into himself. _That's definitely moving way too fucking fast. _

"Hey Kat, can you come help me in the kitchen?" Janie asked.

Kat nodded, handing Chrissy off to her grandmother. "Sure."

As soon as Kat and Janie were out of earshot, Nessa and Todd Morton turned to Jon.

"Now, we wanna make this perfectly clear," Janie's mother said, still incredibly intimidating despite the sleeping infant in her arms. "Kitty is like another daughter to us, and if you hurt her, there is no power in this universe that is going to stop us from hunting you down and making you regret it. Understood?"

Jon could only nod; he was too surprised to do anything else.

"What do you think they're talking about in there?" Kat asked Janie when they got into the kitchen and started putting out the dessert items.

"Oh, the usual. Mama's giving the 'you hurt my baby girl and no power in the 'verse will be able to stop me from hunting you down' spiel."

"Oh good Lord," Kat said, fighting back laughter as she hid her face behind one of her hands. "And here I thought only you and Allie were special enough for those talks."

"Don't be ridiculous," Janie said, hugging her adoptive sister. "You've been family for years. I thought you'd be used to it by now."

"You'd think," Kat said, looking off somewhat wistfully for a moment before coming back to herself and heading into the family room again. "What on earth is going on here?" she asked, her hands on her hips, as she saw Jon on the floor with both BJ and Raelynn on top of him.

"We're wrasslin' Aunt Kat!" BJ exclaimed.

"Oh really?" she replied, looking at Jon with a smirk.

"Yeah, Aunt Kat," Raelynn chimed in. "We asked Mister Jon if he would play with us, and then Bubba jumped on him!"

"Brenton James," Kat said, a disapproving tone coloring her voice. "What have I told you about jumping on people?"

BJ quickly got off of Jon. "Not to," he said, looking down at the ground.

"Exactly. And what do we say?"

"Sorry," he said to Jon, his lower lip sticking out adorably.

"We're cool, little man," he said, standing up next to Kat and putting his arm around her waist.

"Now off to the kitchen with you two little heathens," Kat said. "I'm pretty sure your mama has your dessert ready for you."

The twins rushed off, leaving Kat and Jon with a brief moment of semi-solitude.

"You're really good with them," he said, pulling her close and pecking her lips gently.

"Yeah well, Janie didn't give me much of a choice," Kat said.

"That's because you refuse to have children of your own!" Janie called from the kitchen.

"Shut up Janie!" Kat called back, her face flushing red for what felt like the gazillionth time while they had been at Janie and Brent's.

"You know you love me!" her former roommate retorted, earning herself a flipped bird that was fortunately not observed by the children.

Dessert went by without a hitch and soon everyone was saying their goodbyes to head back home.

"You've found yourself a good one baby," Nessa cooed, pulling Kat into a tight hug. "Don't you let him get away now."

"Yes, mama," she said, smiling in spite of herself.

"And you," she said, turning to Jon. "Remember what I told you."

"I will," he replied.

"Good," she said, pulling him into a hug as well. Kat had to bite back a giggle at how uncomfortable he looked, not everyone was prepared for one of Nessa Morton's hugs.

Kat breathed a sigh of relief when her front door closed behind them. Now it was just her and Jon.

"Have I told you how amazing you look tonight?" he rasped in her ear, pressing her back against the front door.

"You might have mentioned it," she murmured, capturing his lips in a searing kiss that made her own toes curl. "Thank you for dealing with all of them today, I know it was probably a lot to handle."

"Mmmhhmmm," he said, focused more on her body pressing against his than on the words coming out of her mouth. One of his hands worked its way under the hem of her dress and along her thigh, teasing the skin there and causing her to moan.

"Kat, who the fuck is this?"

Kat's eyes snapped open, looking over Jon's shoulder to see Maria standing in the living room archway, having seen everything. Kat quickly separated herself from Jon and stepped between him and her sister. She gave him a look and a jerk of her head that told him that he really didn't want to be between the two siblings at this particular moment.

"This is none of your business, Maria," Kat said as Jon headed out of the line of fire.

"Like hell it isn't!" the redhead shot back. "Did you skip out on Thanksgiving just to spend time with him?"

Jon could still hear the argument as he headed down the hallway to Kat's office, and he had to restrain himself from going out and giving Maria Tyler a piece of his mind.

"And here you were, practically fucking him against the door like a two-dollar whore!" the woman yelled.

"Will you just mind your own goddamn business for once, Maria?! It's my house and it's none of your concern who or what I do here." Jon could hear Kat's voice crack, and he wanted nothing more at that moment than to go to her, but he didn't. "And it's kind of rich that you're accusing me of skipping out on Thanksgiving when you obviously had to have done something to have made it here from Springfield!"

The voices got fainter and fainter before the argument disappeared entirely, ending with a door slamming. Jon came out of Kat's office to find her sitting at the kitchen island with her face in her hands.

"What the hell just happened?" he asked, coming around the island, so that he was facing her.

She looked up at him and he was surprised to see tears starting to form at the corners of her eyes. "That was my sister Maria. Charming, isn't she?"

**And now I'm gonna go hide from all the projectiles y'all are throwing in my general direction until Teanni gets back from Ireland (lucky girl!) Send me a review if you so choose, I do love to hear what you think! **


	12. Chapter 12

**Okay y'all, so Teanni is the best beta in the whole wide world for sending me my chapters back even when she's off having adventures in Ireland (I'm only a teeny-tiny bit jealous). So yeah, general consensus is that no one likes Maria, and I don't blame y'all one bit. **

Jon looked at Kat in shock, her words barely registering in his brain. "Your sister?"

Kat took a shuddering breath and nodded, wiping at the corners of her eyes, stalwartly refusing to let him see her _so_ vulnerable so soon in their relationship. "Excuse me for a sec," she said. "I need to make a quick phone call."

She grabbed her cell phone off the kitchen island and quickly dialed her home phone number, hoping her mom would pick up.

"Happy Thanksgiving!" her father's voice boomed though the receiver.

"Happy Thanksgiving, dad," Kat said her breathing still kind of shaky from the shouting match with Maria.

"What's wrong, Kat?" her father asked, concerned as to why his eldest daughter sounded like she had been crying.

"Nothing, everything's fine. I just got home from Janie's. Is mom there? I need to ask her something really quick."

"Sure thing, sweetheart. Honey, Kat's on the phone for you!"

Kat chuckled softly at her father's words before her expression darkened again. Maria had crossed a line this time and Kat was sick and tired of it.

"Hi honey," Lorraine Tyler said. "What's going on?"

"Where's Maria?" she asked tersely, not even bothering with niceties.

"She said she had to work…Why do you ask?"

"Because she was in my house when I got home from Janie and Brent's, and then proceeded to accuse me of skipping out on family Thanksgiving to spend time with Jon, which was not true…"

"Hold on," her mother interrupted. "Who is Jon?"

_Fuck. _Kat cursed mentally. "It's complicated," she said, not wanting to go putting labels on something that they had just agreed not to label the night before. "The simplest way to say it is that he's this guy I'm seeing. He went with me to Janie and Brent's for Thanksgiving."

"Okay, so let me get this straight. Maria was at your house when you got home from Janie's?"

"Correct."

"And then what happened?"

"She basically called me a two-dollar whore and accused me of skipping out on family Thanksgiving. Fucking hypocrite."

"Katharine Christine! Language!" Lorraine sounded shocked, but at this point Kat couldn't really be bothered to care.

"I'm done with her, mom," she said, starting to cry in spite of her intense desires not to. "I am so done!"

Jon watched as Kat's walls began to crumble and she started to sob. _Shit. What do I do? _He thought. He had no experience with crying females! _Where the fuck is Colby or Joe when I need them?_ He brought himself back to the present very quickly. This was Kat he was talking about. _His _Kat, and she was upset because her sister was (and this was just his first impression), a heinous bitch. He went over to her and took her into his arms, letting her sob into his shoulder as he rubbed circles on her back.

"I'll talk to her, Kat. Okay?" her mom suggested.

"Is that supposed to help?" she said, trying to catch her breath. "I'm going off-grid for a bit. In case Maria decides to come to her senses and apologize like she always does." Kat tried not to sound _so _bitter but it was really, really difficult. After dealing with the same shit for nearly twenty years, Kat wasn't kidding when she said she was done. Every argument with Maria would always go like this, she would yell hurtful things and then call back a few hours later as apologetic as anything, begging for forgiveness. Kat was done. She had it up to _here _with her sister's shit and was not about to let it ruin what had been an almost delightful Thanksgiving.

"Okay, honey. Call me tomorrow, okay?"

"Okay." Kat said and hung up the phone, holding the button at the top and shutting it off before placing it back on the kitchen island. "Sorry you had to see me like this. I probably look a hot mess right now."

Jon wiped away one of the tears that was working its way down her cheek and gave her a little half-smile. "I'm just more confused than anything," he admitted. "What…" his hands flailed around for a moment as his mouth tried to find the words that would cause the least amount of potential damage to his newfound relationship. "…happened with you and your sister?"

Kat ran her hand through the top of her hair and sighed loudly. "That is an incredibly long and drawn-out conversation that I am honestly too emotionally drained for right now. Could we possibly talk about it tomorrow? After I've had some sleep?"

"Sure," he said, wrapping his arms around her and kissing her thoroughly, disregarding the fact that her mascara had made it look like she had two black eyes from the crying, he didn't care. He lifted her up to make up for their slight height difference, one of his hands knotting itself in her hair as their lips moved together. Her legs wrapped around his waist, bringing their faces closer and allowing her arms to wrap around his neck. "Sleep, huh?" he said, when they paused to catch their breath.

She looked at him, one eyebrow raised. "I mean, we can go to sleep if you want." The way she was biting her bottom lip was driving him crazy, and she knew it. "But I figured we could finish what we had started first…"

"Brilliant idea, doll," he said, carrying her the rest of the way into her bedroom and setting her down just long enough to undo the belt around her waist and pull her dress over her head, tossing it into the corner. She kissed him as she worked on the buttons of his shirt, her fingers nimbly unfastening them and impatiently pushing the shirt off of his shoulders and onto the floor before pulling his t-shirt over his head.

Her hands roamed teasingly across his pecks and down his abs before reaching his belt buckle. His hands stopped her. She looked up at him, confusion clouding her features for a brief moment. He smirked at her before picking her up and carrying her over to the bed. He unsnapped her bra, quickly tossing it aside before laying her down and looking her over.

Kat did her best to hide her blush, for all the good that did. Her bottom lip found its way between her teeth again, and she looked up at Jon with a fair amount of more confidence than she was actually feeling. He hovered above her, his lips meeting hers in a searing kiss that caused her to moan. He chuckled, his hands teasing her breasts, causing her to make the most adorable mewling sounds he had ever heard, which were at the same time incredibly sexy. His lips traveled to the hollow of her throat, eliciting another moan from the woman underneath him. He smiled, loving what he was doing to her.

Kat was being tortured, and it was torture of the sweetest kind. Good God that man was talented! Her back arched as his mouth latched on to one of her breasts, his hand teasing the other nub. "Jon…" she moaned, her ability to form a coherent thought completely gone out the window.

"You like that, doll?" he asked, pausing from his ministrations to give her a mischievous grin. She could only nod. He kissed his way down her stomach, teasing her with kisses around her navel before arriving at her lace-covered heat. "You okay?" he asked, asking before he went any further. She nodded again. He slid her panties down her legs and began kissing up one of her legs.

Kat threw her head back against the pillows, her body convulsing as his tongue delved into her core. Her hands fisted the sheets at her sides and she tried to bite back her moans of ecstasy as that feeling uncoiled in the pit of her stomach and the wave of her orgasm crashed over her.

Jon came back into her line of sight grinning like a cat who had just gotten the cream. She sat up and pulled him towards her, kissing him deeply as she cleverly maneuvered so she was on top.

"You're wearing too many clothes," she said, shaking her head disapprovingly, sliding down his body and divesting him of his pants and boxer briefs. She had been about to take him into her mouth when his hand came down and brought her chin up so she could see his face.

"Nah, doll. Tonight's about you, now c'mere." He kissed her, this time sweetly, as if she was delicate. The next kiss was fiercely passionate as he aligned himself with her opening and thrust in, giving her a moment to adjust to his size before beginning to move. She could feel a second orgasm building, and could feel herself tightening around him.

"Jon…" she moaned.

"I know, I know…" he said as they both fell over that razor's edge together. She got up to get herself cleaned up once that boneless feeling left, returning to bed and the man in said bed soon after, where they fell asleep in each other's arms.

Kat woke up early, as was her habit, and was pleasantly loose and sore from the previous evening's activities. Except for the migraine that had decided to rear its ugly head, an unfortunate side effect of the majority of her and Maria's shouting matches. She got up and took a hot shower, popping a couple of the prescriptions that she had for the migraines, brushed her teeth, and got dressed in a pair of jeans and a v-neck t-shirt. She smiled at the sleeping figure of Jon, still in bed and snoring softly, and headed down the hallway to the kitchen to make tea and get started on breakfast. She knew she had some explaining to do.

She hit the power button on the top of her cell phone, turning it on for the first time in a few hours, and giving it a few moments to power up and register all of the missed calls and text messages. True to form, there was a voicemail from Maria, sort-of apologizing for what she said. Kat deleted the message. Maria always apologized, but the apology was only good until the next time it happened. Kat set her phone down on the counter a bit more roughly than she probably should have, and went to set out Moxie's food, not entirely sure what to feed the man who was currently inhabiting her bed.

"Morning," Jon rasped from the doorway about 30 minutes later as Kat was sipping on her morning cup of tea.

"Morning," she said, getting up and kissing him softly. "What would you like for breakfast?"

"Hmmm," he said, wrapping an arm around her waist. "I can think of one thing."

"I was talking about food," she said.

"So was I!" he said, trying to put on an innocent face, which Kat wasn't buying for a second.

"Mhmm, sure you were. But seriously, breakfast? I can make waffles, pancakes, eggs, toast, give me something to work with here?"

"Coffee?" he asked.

Kat nodded and got him a cup. He took a seat next to her at the kitchen island.

"So, I told you I'd explain about what the fuck happened last night…"

**I know, I'm evil! Feel free to send me a review and let me know just how evil I am, they honestly make my day. And a colossal thank you to everyone who has reviewed, followed, favorited and read this story. The response has been so humbling, especially considering that it's coming up on a year that the "Kat-bunny" as I call this little plot bunny has been hopping around in my head. Until next time! **


	13. Chapter 13

**And here we are with another chapter! Thank you to the lovely Teanni, as usual :) Here we go!**

Kat sat there for a moment, waiting for Jon to say something, anything that might give her some sort of reprieve from explaining her incredibly complicated relationship with her sister. When an escape was not forthcoming, she took a long drink of her tea and sighed, resigning herself to a very long, drawn-out, and most likely emotionally draining discussion.

"Okay, so a bit of background—when I was younger, I had a bit of a Perfect Child Complex, Maria had a rougher time. She always felt that she had to compete with me, which lead to a lot of resentment. I started going to Gratton straight out of high school on a huge scholarship, studying Chemistry…"

"Chemistry?" Jon interrupted. "But, you're…you're gonna get to that, aren't you?"

Kat nodded. "Yeah. I realized pretty quickly that chem wasn't my field; that was more of Janie's thing. Maria always had issues with me going away for school; she kept saying it was selfish of me to go so far away, even though it was only a couple hours. After a while, I found excuses not to go home on breaks just so I wouldn't have to deal with the arguments. It got even worse once I graduated and got accepted to Berkeley."

She paused for a moment to take another drink of her tea and to collect her thoughts. Right through here was about when the story got a bit more complex.

"The last year and a half of grad school I was down in a very remote area of South America. It took us two days on foot and by canoe to get to the village, so my communication with the outside world was incredibly limited. When I got back from that, everything was actually kind of okay between Maria and me. Until I told her and my parents that I was taking the position at Gratton and would basically be living with Janie and Brent."

If she was being really, truly honest with herself, Kat was glossing over a lot of the details of her and Maria's childhood. She was about to start in on some of those previously glossed-over details, when Jon's cell phone started ringing.

"Sorry," he said, looking down at the screen. "It's corporate."

"Go ahead," she said, secretly relieved that this conversation wasn't going to have to last near as long as she originally thought it was going to. Jon stepped out of the kitchen to take the phone call, which gave Kat a moment to refill the tea and get started on breakfast. She assumed toast was a safe option, after all who didn't like toast? She had just put the bread into the toaster when Jon came back into the kitchen.

"So, I have to go," he said, looking at her somewhat sheepishly. He didn't want to, but they needed him for the house show on Saturday, and he needed to leave soon if he was going to make it to the city in time.

"Already?" Kat hated the slightly whiny note that somehow sneaked into her voice with that word.

Jon nodded, "I'm sorry." He came around the kitchen island and pulled her into his arms.

"It's fine, I understand," she said, and it was the truth. She looked up at him and he kissed her gently.

Kat watched as Jon drove down the driveway, her arms crossed, trying to conserve a bit of warmth in the cool November air. Despite the fact that they had only been together for a couple days, Kat had really enjoyed that time. Now it was time to get back to reality. Jon was back on the road, and she was back to doing her thing, which for the moment was making lecture PowerPoints and mentally calculating just how many days she had until she headed back to Illinois for a month like she had promised.

She headed back into the house and into her office, opening up her laptop on her desk and booting it up before going back to the kitchen to grab her tea. She settled herself in her office chair with one leg tucked under the other and got to work, which was a nice distraction, however momentary, from her thoughts.

Her phone buzzed next to her laptop about an hour later, alerting her to a text from Desiree. _Hey girl hey, how'd everything work out the other night?_

Kat smiled in spite of herself; leave it to Des to be delightfully blunt. That's what she liked about her. _Pretty well, if I do say so myself,_ she texted back. _He just left a little over an hour ago. He went with me to Janie and Brent's for Thanksgiving._

_So are you guys like a thing?_

_Kind of? We aren't labeling anything right now. What about you? _

_What about me?_

_Don't play avoidance with me, Desiree. _

_Colby and I might be talking…_

Kat read that text and smiled widely. Desiree deserved to find someone who would treat her right. It was strangely fitting that the devious plotting ones got together, although Kat feared for her sanity if Colby ever got any more genius "Lock Kat in a closet" ideas. _Just might? That sounds noncommittal._

_Okay, fine. We are talking. Happy?_

_Very. _Kat set the phone aside and continued on the slides for a few more minutes, she wanted to be as prepared as possible when she started teaching in the middle of January.

When she finally took a break from the computer screen, she headed over to Janie and Brent's to check on Chrissy and the other kids. She came into the house to find the twins taking a nap on the couch, while Chrissy was sleeping (however temporarily) in her bassinet.

"Hey," she whispered to Janie, not wanting to wake any of the kids.

Janie looked over at her quizzically. "What are you doing here? I thought you and Jon would still be at yours." Kat shook her head. "Did something happen?"

The two women relocated to the kitchen so they could talk slightly louder than whispers and still hear if the baby woke up.

"Maria was in my house when we got back," she said matter-of-factly.

"What?!" Janie exclaimed. In their years of friendship, she had seen a fair amount of the tension between the Tyler sisters, but even she didn't know the entire history behind their complicated relationship. "I take it that didn't go well?"

"Of course it didn't," Kat replied. "It didn't help that she kind of interrupted a-shall we say _delicate_-situation."

"Yikes. What did you do?"

"We screamed at each other like we always do. She left in a rage. I called Mom then shut my phone off for the night. She left me an 'apologetic' voicemail," she put a tangible amount of sarcasm in the air quotes around 'apologetic' and shrugged.

"How'd Jon deal with it?" Janie asked, genuinely curious.

"Well, I was a mess," Kat admitted. "He handled it exceptionally well, all things considered."

Jon had a lot to consider from the past few days he had spent with Kat. Her issues with her sister were obviously deep-rooted, and though she had shared a bit, he could sense her reluctance. He was mentally kicking himself for not getting between the two women when they had fought on Thursday night.

"Who are you texting, man?" he asked Colby, who had been almost literally glued to his phone.

"Umm… Desiree…"

"Like, Kat's sister Desiree?" Joe asked. Colby nodded. "Damn bro, I mean I knew y'all hit it off when we took her home, but I didn't realize it was anything serious."

"We're just talking, man," he said.

Jon was quiet for a moment, thinking.

"Is everything okay? You've been really quiet," Joe asked.

Jon wasn't quite sure what to answer. It had been barely two months since he and Kat had met, and they had actually been together less than a week of that time. Now the situation with her sister was making his head spin. He was in a lot deeper than he had ever been, and he was scared.

"Dude?" Colby waved a hand in front of his face to get his attention. "Did something happen while you were gone?"

"Sort of. Kat and her sister Maria got into it when we got back to her place from Thanksgiving dinner."

"Shit," Colby breathed. "And?"

"Now it's got me thinking." _Fuck._

Kat was in her office on Monday when Kallie Frey, one of her advisees, came by and knocked on the door.

"Hey Dr. Tyler, do you have a minute?" the girl asked, trying to finger-tame her pixie cut that was curling by itself thanks to an unexpected rainstorm.

"Of course," she said with a smile, setting her phone behind her so she wouldn't be tempted to check it every two minutes like she had for the past few days. "What can I do for you?"

She listened as the girl detailed the issues she was having with one of Dr. Anders' projects. Her field site that had seemed like the perfect thing with her chaotic schedule of class, work and extra-curricular activities had turned into a literal pain in the ass. Her informants had suddenly become incredibly uncooperative and it was definitely taxing the younger woman's resolve.

"I mean," she concluded. "I've had to create a 'Keep Kallie out of a padded box' sub-committee just so my sanity doesn't completely fly out the window."

Kat nodded. "I definitely understand. The main thing to remember about field work is that even if everything goes really, really wrong and seems like a total failure, we want to record the methods of it and try to work around it. Besides, there's what? Another two weeks left in the semester? I think you'll do fine. If you're really concerned about it though, I would talk to Dr. Anders. He's been doing this a lot longer than I have."

Kallie smiled and looked slightly less stressed than she did when she walked in, which in Kat's mind was a success. "Thanks so much Dr. Tyler, this really helped."

"Any time, Kallie," she said, waving as the young woman walked out of her office door. She turned and hit the home button on her phone, checking once again for messages. Nothing. She had received a text from Jon when he had reached his destination in the wee hours of Saturday morning, letting her know he had gotten there safely, but there had been radio silence since then.

She had attributed Saturday to him being busy with the shows, but then Sunday rolled around and she had started to have small niggling feelings of worry in the back of her mind. Now it was Monday, she was in her office and had still not heard a peep out of him. The worry was beginning to morph into her insecurity and no small amount of resentment.

_Calm down, _she told herself. _He's probably really busy._

**Yup, I know, I'm a terrible human being. Feel free to shoot me a review and let me know what you thought! A colossal thank you to everyone who has reviewed, followed, favorited, and all of you silent readers out there! I really appreciate each and every one of you! Until next time!**


	14. Chapter 14

Kat stared into the amber-colored liquid in front of her, taking a swig and grimacing slightly as it burned its way down her throat. _Four days_. Her phone sat beside her at the kitchen island, stalwartly refusing to give her what she wanted. She had texted him Tuesday night, wanting to make sure he was okay after the show tapings. No response. It was now Wednesday and she was indulging in what was her second -_no third?_ glass of scotch. She wasn't drowning her sorrows necessarily; it was more of an attempt to get the jeering voice of her sister, screaming at her that no one would ever want her, to shut the hell up. It wasn't working out too well.

Her phone vibrated on the island next to her. She gave the caller ID a cursory glance before swiping across the screen and picking up the phone.

"Hello?" she answered.

"Kat, are you okay?" Desiree's voice came from across the line. The older woman could hear the slight slur in her former mentee's voice, which meant that Kat had been hitting some of the heavier stuff. Ergo, she was seriously upset.

Kat briefly contemplated denying that anything was wrong, but honestly knew better than to try and lie to Des, even in her slightly inebriated state. "No, I'm not okay Dessie. Can you come over?"

"I'll be right there, hang tight, hon." Des knew this was serious shit if Kat was calling her Dessie. That nickname only ever came out when Kat was feeling intensely vulnerable. She got in her car and drove as fast as she could to get to Kat's, not even bothering to knock when she got there.

Desiree couldn't believe what she was seeing when she stepped into Kat's kitchen. There was Kat, sitting at the island with a 2/3-full bottle of scotch, her hair thrown up in a messy topknot, wearing a pair of leggings and a sweater. She looked a mess.

"Honey, what happened?" Des asked, carefully moving the bottle of scotch out of range of the inebriated woman and wrapping her in a hug.

Kat said nothing, just unlocked her phone and handed it to her. She held the phone for a second in confusion.

"Hon, what am I supposed to be seeing here?" she asked, putting the phone back in Kat's line of vision for a brief moment. Kat tapped her fingers on the screen, pulling up the text log between her and Jon. Des looked, seeing that the last message he had sent had been on Saturday.

"You're upset because you haven't heard from him?" Kat nodded miserably. Des's first reaction was _well, that's a tiny bit pathetic. _But then she remembered this was Kat Tyler. The same Kat Tyler, who in her sophomore year of undergrad had fallen hard for a boy. Long story short, he had gotten what he wanted and then disappeared off the face of the planet, leaving her so shattered that it had taken ten years for her to open herself up to personal intimacy again. All that considered, Des was half tempted to have some very stern words with Jon Good. God help him.

Jon had spent the last four days thinking about what he had dubbed in his brain the "Kat-situation". And he wasn't much further on Wednesday than he had been on Saturday. He obviously had some sort of feelings for the woman, that much was clear. Their chemistry was electric, the sex was fantastic, but there was still the gaping chasm between them that he was still trying to come to terms with.

"Des, calm down," Colby said, coming into the hotel room. "What's going on?"

Jon's ears perked up, hearing Colby on the phone with Des. He hoped nothing was wrong with Kat.

"Dude," Colby said, covering the mouthpiece really quickly to talk to Jon. "Have you talked to Kat lately?"

"Not since Saturday, why?" he asked. "Is she okay?"

Colby handed him the phone and his stomach dropped. "Desiree? Is Kat okay?"

"I want you to listen, and I want you to listen to me very closely," Des's voice was low and incredibly dangerous-sounding. "If you aren't serious about whatever your relationship with Kat is, you need to man the fuck up and end it now. That girl has gone through too much for her to get any more attached to you than she already is and for you to break her heart. Honestly, it's a miracle she's as stable as she is right now, after all the shit Maria put her through." He was silent for a moment, trying to fully grasp the gravity of Desiree's words. "She hasn't told you this, and most likely won't for a while, but her sister put her through hell for most of their childhood. She still deals with a lot of that shit, and you randomly deciding to ignore her for God-knows-what-reasons has _definitely _not helped."

Jon felt like he had just been sucker-punched in the gut. And he felt like shit. Who knew what sorts of things had been going through Kat's head while he had been "thinking things through". He was a dumbass of the first degree, and that was for sure and for certain.

"I'm an idiot," he said into the phone.

"Not hearing any disagreement from me," Des said, not mincing words. "It's probably best if you don't mention that you know about the Maria thing until Kat is ready to tell you though. Trust me, I only know because we got really drunk together one night back in college and she kind of broke down and told me all about it. She doesn't remember that. And she isn't going to know about this conversation either. Mostly because she's going to have a hell of a hangover tomorrow and I got her to bed before she did any actual damage. Now, here's the real question, when are you gonna get your ass back here and fix this?"

Jon wanted nothing more than to leave right now and go fix things with Kat, but they had media all week before the house shows. He pushed his hair back and sighed in frustration. It was going to be a literal week before he could get back to her. "Next week," he mumbled. "We have media on all of our off days this week. But don't worry, I'll fix it."

"You better," Des said. "You can hand me back to Colby now."

The thing Kat loved the most about Thursdays in the fall was that she didn't have to go to the university and sit in her office for hours if she didn't feel like it. When she woke up with a splitting headache, she definitely did not possess the patience to be around humans for any length of time. She took some of the Advil that Des had so nicely left on her nightstand and slowly made her way out of her bed. She headed for the bathroom and started a scalding hot shower in an attempt to speed her return to the land of the living.

She stood under the stream of hot water and sighed as the heat worked its way down her body. Her thoughts traveled to Jon, wondering what he was doing and where he was. She bit her lower lip stubbornly. She was not going to dwell on this. If he was just going to ignore her, that was his decision and he would get to deal with the consequences. _As if, _she thought, thoroughly killing that very nice pseudo-strong thought where it stood. _We both know that if he was to show up right now with some sort of explanation, we would eat it right up. _She sighed. It was true.

"Okay, Kat. Time to stop standing under the water and racking up the water bill," she said, shutting the water off and reaching for a fluffy towel. She dressed in a pair of jeans and a long-sleeved v-neck, fishtail braiding her hair to the side so it would stay out of the way. She wasn't entirely certain what she was going to do, but knew she needed to do something or else she'd just end up staring at her phone and drinking again. Which she didn't want to do. In fact, she resolved not to look at her phone at all.

She left her phone sitting right on the kitchen counter, somehow resisting the urge to check for even one tiny message, and pulled on her barn boots before heading out the back door to go spend some quality time with the man in her life who wouldn't ignore her. She got Riot brushed and tacked up before they headed out on the trails, definitely giving Kat the time she needed to think things over.

"I don't know boy," she said to the horse, as they plodded along the trail at a nice, steady pace. "I mean, I like him a lot but I can't do this being ignored shit. I get that he's busy but it literally takes fifteen seconds to send a text." She sighed. She was basically out in the middle of the woods, talking to herself, on the back of a horse. It's no wonder people had called her crazy. They continued on for a while yet, leaves crunching under Riot's hooves and swirling around them in the breeze before they turned back towards home. Kat got Riot cleaned up and fed and did a few chores around the barn before heading back up to the house.

She had just kicked her boots off when her phone started ringing wildly from the kitchen counter. She walked over, and answered it. "Hello?"

"Kat!" Jon's voice sounded both surprised and relieved. "I've been trying to call you for over an hour."

"I was out with Riot," she said. _Over an hour? _She internally screamed. _I've been trying to get a hold of you for five fucking days!_

"Right," he said. There was an awkward pause. "I-I wanted to…I'msorryIfuckedupI'manass."

"Could I get that last part again?" she said.

"I'm sorry. I've been thinking over the past few days, and it's led me to realize a few things."

"Oh really?" Kat asked, suddenly not liking the turn of this conversation whatsoever. "Like what?"

She heard him take a deep breath, which only increased her anxiety about what he was about to say. She walked over to the fridge and pulled out a bottle of wine. She had a feeling she might need it after this conversation was over.

"You're a doctor, Kat. I beat people up for a living. You have all of these fancy degrees and I barely made it out of high school. You deserve someone on your level."

Kat was speechless. This was coming out of nowhere. "Where the hell is this coming from, Jon?" she asked, any residual happiness at hearing from him quickly evaporating about as quickly as their relationship. "You know what, never mind. Thanks for calling? Next time don't bother." She quickly hung up the phone before he could hear her cry.

She fetched a wineglass from the cabinet, still in possession of enough decorum not to drink directly out of the bottle, and went into the living room. She stripped off her jeans and wrapped herself in a blanket, turning on the TV and putting in her DVD of _Pride and Prejudice_. If there was anything on this green Earth that was going to make her feel even remotely better, it was going to be Jane Austen.

"Damn you, Mr. Darcy," Kat said as the movie came to an end. "Why can't you be real?" She was officially resolving not to open herself up to this kind of thing again. Moxie meowed from next to her and purred. "Yes, Moxie, you and Riot are all I need."

**I'm just gonna go into hiding for about a week until everyone cools down from what I just did here. Feel free to send me a review and let me know just how evil I am! Teanni has already let me know how evil I am! Thank you so much to everyone who has read, followed and reviewed this story, you guys mean the world to me! **


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